


Kasvatus

by onnenlintu



Series: The Kasvatus Series [2]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Lalli avoids pakkoruotsi, M/M, really how unfair is it that even after the world ends he still has to learn Swedish, this timeline fixes the injustice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 18:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13723503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: The sequel to Good for Something. This is a fic about the wide fallout of a person's death, the long road to things becoming okay, and carving out the space for nurturing in a very un-nurturing world. It's also about homebrew, sheep, toddlers, rabbit skins, and Finnish grammar. Tuuri related healing a major theme. Lalli/Emil, with half of Keuruu as support.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this over the course of about a week. It could be sharper, but I wanted to get something out to help tide people over during the chapter break. Posted all in one go because I hate waiting for updates and I assume you do too.
> 
> Edit: Just realised I forgot to thank thezonesystems for answering all the questions I had about what might be common knowledge for the average Swedish boy and whether this or that aspect of Finnish would be more or less confusing to a native Swedish speaker. Probably not something every fic reader even cares about, but we do.

Siv was pleased that Emil had finally found an academic pursuit he was willing to put real effort into, although she did sort of wish it had been the Icelandic boy he'd gotten fixated on instead. It would have had a much more useful outcome in the long run, and she would have been able to understand the long rambles about the horrible-sounding grammar of the Finnish language that now came with his afternoon habit of standing in her kitchen and eating all the bread. She had been mildly impressed when as the winter began to finally show signs of ending, he sent a letter, and apparently it was legible enough that a response had come. It had taken him over an hour to totally decipher with the aid of a grammar reference and a dictionary, and a full evening to compose a response to, but nonetheless there he was, corresponding in Finnish.  His pen pal must have been somewhat invested in communicating with him, because with his second reply, Emil's last letter had been enclosed, carefully marked all over with notes ("That's not Lalli's handwriting! He's told someone about me!") in a mix of Swedish and Finnish pointing out the errors. Emil had whined at length about something called the partitive, a terrifying-sounding beast Siv had not encountered even when struggling with Icelandic cases as a teenager, but taken note of everything the mystery assistant had told him before spending another evening writing.  
  
When, as spring began, he had announced that there was the opportunity soon for some Cleansers to go help out in Finland, she was tentatively supportive. Logically, she knew Emil would be fine. He had not only survived the Silent World, but come back from it with a thoughtfulness and discipline she had been expecting would take him several more years. Finland would not be anything near as bad. Of course, all she'd read and heard about it made her very sure it wasn't her ideal holiday destination. While it did make sense that a place with so few resources would not prioritise reintroducing concepts like indoor plumbing, the idea of an entire country run that way was somewhat offputting. They had radios, though, and at least one cleansed town, and there must be a few people there who were more like Tuuri had been than like her perpetually grumpy male relatives. Siv had liked her and her casual, optimistic cleverness, for what little she'd really seen, and still felt a real sadness when she thought of what had happened in the winter just gone.  
  
What was on her mind right now, though, was neither Emil's physical safety nor the hell he and his crewmates had been through last winter. Now that he was about to leave for the summer's work, she had her work cut out.  
  
"So you say you've told him you're coming to Finland."  
  
"Yep! Turns out that the area we're clearing out is right near where he works, too. I guess it makes sense, there's not many places in Finland overall, are there? They want to do... something with potatoes. I think he said something like 'finally area about potato countries', I guess you can sometimes call potato fields that in Finnish, too? I-"  
  
She interrupted him, gently but firmly. "Emil."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Don't go getting your heart broken, alright? I hope you're not expecting too much."  
  
Emil gave her the same look he'd been giving her for months, which she knew meant he wasn't taking in a word she said. "Am I not allowed to want to say hello to the person who saved my life a dozen times last winter?"  
  
"Sigrun did that too, and you've not written to her once."  
  
"I got her on the radio a few weeks ago! We're both busy."  
  
Siv just sighed. Well, if he went to Finland all starry-eyed and came back a bit disappointed, it wouldn't kill him. Maybe it would result in more of that unexpected personal growth. "Well, good luck and have fun, sweetheart. Remember we love you. Try to write if you can."  
  
Emil gave her his cheesiest grin and a hug. "I will! Thanks for the sandwiches!"  
  
Siv saw him off with a fond smile. He was a sweet boy, really, and she always missed his babysitting services when he was away. The spring air still had a light bite to it, and she hoped that whatever they used to put up visiting military units in Finland, it wasn't too drafty. Through everything with her siblings-in-law, the expedition and now this, she had only ever wished for the best for Emil.  
  
Two days later, after a rude note from the library, she realised both that Emil had taken multiple borrowed books with him - including a grammar reference and a dictionary - and that she would be liable for what would be months of late fees. She resolved to be absolutely merciless in wringing free childcare out of him when her useless nephew finally returned home.


	2. Chapter 2

The fat, wet snowflakes of a late spring flurry settled in Lalli's hair and melted, leaving a tingle of cold on the tips of his ears. Leaping upwards, he scrambled onto the top of a rock, using the vantage point to jump again and catch the lowest branch of a tall pine in one thickly-gloved hand. He hauled himself upwards, limb by limb, until he could nest in the thick bundle of branches at the top, bracing himself against the fat scales of its bark. The realm of Tapio was laid out in front of him, and while its floor still rested in shadow, the endless treetops had already taken on the fresh golden light of morning. A brisk wind bit his cheek, gave a sting to his breath, and also moved the trees, frosting their needles with the indecisive snow it carried.  
  
The real snow had been gone for some weeks now, of course. The forest was unveiling all that had lain asleep since the autumn, easing out of the ice that had held it for the past months, and taking the long breath it always took before exploding all at once. Lalli could feel it coming, and when he sang his runo to the dawning sun, he also called to the yellow star-of-bethlehems and crocuses he knew would rise from the earth soon, telling them that he was ready to see them bloom. The wind sang back to him in the speech of the forest, and today the voices of the gods and living creatures outnumbered the haunted cries of infected beasts and trolls. He took a moment to enjoy the solitude of being cradled by the wind and wood, his work for the night well done, before slipping back down the trunk of the tree, landing in a fluid squat, and trotting back towards Keuruu.  
  
As he approached the contained area of the town, the land opened up to the fields that partially sustained it, covered in sheep and dense tufts of spring barley. They were packed together with no trees to break them up, taking full advantage of what little cleansed space they had, and it gave Lalli a full line of sight up to the walls. The farmlands of Mustasaari and Melonsaari had once been covered with houses, but these had been razed to the ground by a series of cleansing operations long before Lalli had come to Keuruu. He stuck to the edges of the long ditches as best he could, disturbing not even the ewes, fat with lambs, that were busily cropping the new grass.   
  
Slipping through a gate and into the alleyways towards the little room where he would write out and file his report was often better in winter. Yes, the forest was a frostier companion during its months of dormancy, but when the long dark lay on the world and muted everything with its bitter blanketing, he could keep to the shadows and manage to get back to his bed without so much as a glance from another human being. There were an unusual amount of people awake early today, and it was non-ideal. Most were headed towards the dock, so he avoided them as they approached, wending his way in the opposite direction and finally cracking open the heavy door. He'd hated this door when he started scouting, his arms a decade ago having been even thinner than they were now, but the strength had grown into them many years ago and he slipped into the room without thinking about it.  
  
Somebody was waiting in there, surrounded by the other night scouts. This was unusual. Often there would be another scout in there, filing their own report at the same time, and their interaction would be kept to an exchange of nods before they both went their own way. It was limited, but constant enough that Lalli could recognise every one of them by the way they held their weight when they stood. This person was not so familiar, and looked at Lalli with some kind of expectation, and Lalli realised that every other scout he felt should be here today was already here.  
  
"File your report and get in the circle, we've got some important things to get through."  
  
Lalli hated the feeling of unexpected obligations, and realising that someone had been waiting for him to arrive definitely fell under that category. The good mood he'd felt high in the trees began to grow prickles, although his face remained impassive. He felt eyes on him as he noted down details, spare but precise, of every change he'd seen in the forest outside Keuruu, then came to join the circle. The person had taken off her hat to reveal unusually wavy short hair, and he finally recognised that it was Virpi, one of the middle-aged administrators who delegated Keuruu into functionality.  
  
"Alright. As you all should know, the Swedes are arriving today."  
  
Oh. That explained the crowds. Lalli had noted down the date in his report only a few minutes ago, but had failed to register it as anything more than the arbitrary number, his head still full of the concrete changes that were occurring in the forest outside.  
  
"Just to make sure we are all on the same page - this unit will be assisting the usual group of cleansers to clear enough forest that we can both establish significant new farmland and maintain a clear path to and around it, so that non-immune citizens can safely work in the fields. After the shortages in the past few winters, the success of this plan should be of high priority to you all. You should be aware that this summer, your work will have a special focus on gathering details useful to that effort. Those of you that are mages will be expected to confer with each other and communicate what you hear from the forest during this clearing. Be aware that the Swedish do not recognise any gods, much less ours, so you cannot expect them to guide themselves. Is all of that clear?"  
  
Unanimous nodding and a few affirmative noises ensued. Virpi looked around, checking for any signs of confusion, then continued. "Lalli, of the scouts you have an unusual amount of experience working with foriegners, so your routine will be somewhat disrupted for the duration of the summer."  
  
Lalli nodded, accepting this with quiet resignation. What she said was true, although the shaky few phrases of Swedish he'd picked up the previous winter had left his mind after only weeks back in Keuruu. He wondered how many of the Swedes had learned Finnish. Emil had written to him a couple of times, including to tell him that he would be with the unit coming this summer, and while it was a great deal clearer than anything he'd tried to communicate while they were travelling through the Silent World, the way he chose and ordered words was so scattered Lalli often had to read his sentences several times to make sense of them. He'd tried to help, getting someone in the skalds' office to correct Emil's bizarre grammar and sending it back. It certainly wouldn't be possible yet to impress upon him the importance of letting a mage do his work in the forest before clearcutting it, but then, despite his endearing qualities Emil was not always the sharpest person he'd met. If the other Swedes were coming here, they had probably learned to speak a little better than Emil had. And even despite his poor conversation skills, Lalli did look forward to seeing him again. The disruption to the predictable rhythm of his days was deeply annoying, and he wasn't sure anything could quite make up for it, but it was a nice thought.  
  
Virpi was still looking at him. "Is that clear, Lalli?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I will see you this evening for some further details before you go to work. My office is the one three doors down from the brewery. Do you remember?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Good. Go get some sleep."  
  
Lalli slipped out of the door into the bright morning. The snow that had fallen as the sun rose was now just a slick, cool shine on the wooden houses, and through the ambient chill, there was the faintest touch of warmth wherever he moved into the direct sun. There was no time to enjoy it, though, because he would need to be rested this evening. Climbing the stairs to his small room and entering, he turned the little tap on the water container he kept on his table, filling a glass and drinking it all. He was nearly nodding off all the way through his quick destruction of one of the packages of dry meat he always kept hoarded, and was asleep moments after collapsing into his bed.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, why'd you sign up for this backwoods excursion?"  
  
Marcus had been sitting opposite Emil for most of the duration of the long, winding boat ride from Pori to Keuruu, playing solitaire and mostly ignoring him. He was a little older,  but not by much, and wasn't bad looking, in Emil's opinion. Both men had slept too much on the ride across the Baltic and had been awake since the early hours of the morning. "I'm interested in the place, I guess" was the only reply Emil could come up with. Marcus snorted. "Interested? Interesting is not a word I'd use to describe Finland."  
  
"Well, why did you sign up to come here, if it's so boring? It's such a long season, and the pay's no better than usual."  
  
Marcus leaned across the table, nudging his own card arrangement askew. "Because it's the best chance you get as a Cleanser to get as much drinking done as you should in a summer. The Finns take ages to cleanse anything because they're all, you know" - here he waved his hands, crossed his eyes and uttered some sing-songy mumbling in a mocking image of wizardry - "and have to go hug the trees before we cut them down, or something. They're very generous with the beer, though, when they've got it. Suppose they have to know how to drink, given there's fuck-all else to do out there."  
  
Emil felt some level of offence on behalf of the Finnish culture and religion, but he'd learned over the past few months that trying to argue with other Swedes about the latter topic was a great way to get laughed at. "So you've been to Finland before? How do you find the language?"  
  
Marcus just laughed. "Perkele-lainen sauna kal-jaaaaaa, right? Don't worry, all of the ones you really have to talk to speak Icelandic. Terrible Icelandic compared to us Swedes, like" - he inserted another obnoxious impression, this time of something that, to be fair, sounded very much like the intonation he'd heard in Onni's Icelandic - "but still. You'll get by."  
  
Emil just nodded. He did not mention that his Icelandic pretty much ended at "I don't speak Icelandic" and a few parodic phrases about fermented shark. Through the shutters, he could tell that the sunrise was coming, and he vaguely recalled that they were meant to reach Keuruu at around five. He wasn't sure what time the sun rose in Keuruu at this point in the year, but it seemed likely it was more like in Östersund than in Mora, so they must be close. Marcus continued, filling the silence. "It's a pity we've missed their take on Walpurgis by a couple of days. If you think we get trashed then, you should see the Finns!"  
  
Emil was spared from thinking of a response to Marcus's cultural insights when the leader of their unit, a very broad, very blond, and very no-nonsense middle-aged woman named Stella, came to loudly announce that they were nearing Keuruu and needed to "pack their  shit up". A few people were still asleep, so she banged on the sign (Emil was very sure it was requesting quiet on the water) that hung above the room until everyone was sat up, rubbing their eyes and shoving their sleeping rolls into bags. Emil made his way off the boat with some excitement, wondering if there would be a familiar face on the docks.  
  
After several minutes of searching around, he had accomplished two things. The first was ascertaining that Lalli was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Well, he supposed he hadn't actually asked Lalli to come meet him, although he had sort of expected that was what one did when a friend came to visit your hometown. The second was totally missing the scramble for gear that had ensued once the more experienced or astute Cleansers had left the boat. Stella regarded him and the handful of other unfortunates that had failed to claim a tent with an air of extremely limited patience. "Yes, we've had a slight mismatch of personnel and equipment. It's never entirely smooth sailing running an operation out here in the boonies. One of you is going to have to go to the skalds' office and fill out a form."  
  
Emil volunteered. He could handle a form, and would take the excuse to look around Keuruu. The handful of others left without a tent were happy to leave him to it, so he took Stella's directions and headed off, relatively sure where he was going.  
  
Emil wandered for an hour or so, waiting for the town to awaken around him, then set to finding the office in earnest. He finally located the little upstairs door that had been described to him, and knocked. A cheerful voice came from inside. "Ovi on jo avattu!" He recognised nothing other than the fact it was about the door, but given that nobody was opening it for him, he tested the doorknob and luckily found it unlocked. The room inside was lined with five desks, with every space between them stuffed full of folders, books, loose papers and stationary. All the desks were filled but one, four young women looking up from their chairs with polite curiosity. One of them, round-faced and dark-eyed, addressed him again and he recognised the voice behind the door. "Voidaanks auttaa?"  
  
Emil tried to match what she said to the phrases he had read before, and drew a complete blank. "Uhhhhm."  
  
The woman's eyes widened slightly and she quickly apoligised in Icelandic, continuing in Icelandic to ask him something again. Emil had to smile sheepishly and employ the one phrase of Icelandic he knew well. Another one of them, lighter-haired with willowy limbs and large worried eyes that were not totally unlike Lalli's, leaned towards the centre of the room and said something to the first in Finnish far too rapid for Emil to even distinguish words. She smacked herself on the temple, pantomiming self-admonishment. "Oh, of course! You're all Swedes arriving today, aren't you? Sorry, what I meant to say was: can we help you?"  
  
Emil was surprised, but relieved. "You speak Swedish!"  
  
She looked at him as though he'd remarked on the fact she, too, breathed air and drank water. He rushed to clarify. "Well, I'd just heard that hardly anyone speaks it here."  
  
"Given you don't speak Icelandic or Finnish, what exactly were you planning on speaking to us?" Her question was blunt, but her eyes held a slight smile.  
  
Emil had to admit he didn't know, and explained the situation with the tents. She nodded, making nominally sympathetic little noises when he went off on a small tangent of complaint about the general state of the equipment. "Alright. Give me your name and the name of the others who need a place, and I'll try to sort it out by the afternoon."  
  
"Well, mine's Emil Västerström."  
  
"Oh! Were you about to try to speak Finnish to us?"  
  
Emil just looked at her in confusion. The thought had crossed his mind, but he wasn't sure how on earth she could have known that.  
  
"I assume there isn't more than one Emil Västerström per unit of cleansers, and an old colleague's cousin asked me to correct a letter from one who seemed to be trying to learn some Finnish! But perhaps I'm wrong. I've never been to Sweden, every second one of you could be named Emil Västerström for all I know."  
  
A mystery had suddenly been solved. "So it was your handwriting!"  
  
She gave him a now-you-know smug face and handed him the form. "Glad to be of assistance. Now, if you could fill out the other names from your unit, that would be great."  
  
"Oh. I don't actually know exactly who they are. Uh, when you say old colleague..."  
  
He was met with pursed lips. "Yes?"  
  
Emil stumbled like a minute-old calf into a conversation he really hadn't been expecting. "I guess you all learned Swedish together."  
  
Everyone else in the room had stopped working and paused to look at him with undisguised wariness. Emil realised that once again, he was displaying his amazing range of flexibility regarding foot-to-mouth actions. "Uhm. So, who do I give this back to?"  
  
The faint distance in her voice made him feel like the biggest jerk it was possible for a human being to be. "Me. Jaana Hassan. Just write my name on the back and put it in the letterbox outside if you can't get back here in time, although I would recommend doing so if you don't want to sleep in the slush. Do you need me to spell the second part for you?"  
  
"No, no, it's fine! We have that name in Sweden too." Every possible reply felt either totally inane or sure to make the situation worse.  
  
Her expression unexpectedly warmed a little. "Do you really? I've never met another one in Finland. My grandma used to say we might be the last ones in the Known World."  
  
"Oh yeah. Had one in my unit when we went through basic training. We used to call him Honking Hassan and draw straws to decide who shared a tent with him. He snored like an oncoming train." Totally inane, then, was what his brain had gone for. Great work, Emil.  
  
Jaana gave him a look that he couldn't decipher at all, and for a moment Emil was convinced his ridiculous story had totally destroyed what was left of his chance to make a good impression, but all of a sudden she snorted with laughter, a sound so genuine it couldn't fail to reassure him. "I'm so glad that one wouldn't work in Finnish. Alright. Bring me the form back as soon as you can. And you know, if you need someone to help you with your grammar, the office is open most of the day. I know you lot will be out in the field most of the time, but you'll be back in Keuruu more often than you expect."  
  
Emil nodded, smiling with bright relief. "Thank you, that's very kind."  
  
"Well, it's also a chance for us all to practise our Swedish!"  
  
Her Swedish was already fantastic, in Emil's opinion, but given how helpful just her notes had been already he wasn't going to argue.  
  
As he left the office, the other three chimed in with tentative farewells. He descended the stairs, and realised that he'd never actually wondered about the non-family relationships Tuuri had left behind. Once again, he felt like an enormous jerk. A weird ache bloomed in his chest as he thought about how clearly he could picture her spilling enthusiasm and vocabulary lists all over her colleagues. Her friends? As he walked back towards the dock to find the other tentless Cleansers, he remembered that there was a fifth desk sitting in the office he'd just visited, and it had been left pretty much as if someone was coming back to it.


	4. Chapter 4

Moving off night duty had been incredibly grating, and Onni hadn't liked the new setup either. Both of them were "experienced with foreigners", and Onni spoke Icelandic as well, so had been pulled away from his usual duties to perform some of the town-side half of the endless work involved in herding flamethrower-happy Swedish people through the Finnish woods. Lalli was sure their forests were not much different, but their approach to them certainly was. Onni had a talk with their captain, a slightly bug-eyed woman with pale golden hair, before they began work, and she had apparently assured him that nobody in her unit was averse to a summer full of "random" breaks. Onni repeated her phrasing to Lalli with a clear sense of resignation to something going wrong. 

Three days after the Swedes had arrived, Lalli was standing in their camp. Antti, the captain of the Finnish Cleanser unit, was describing in detail the route they planned to take through the forest. Antti had done some scouting in his youth, before a leg injury had made him far too slow a runner. He still walked with a limp, but this did not stop him using an axe or turning various liquids into fire, so a Cleanser he had become. He was precise in his memory and his speech, knew the lay of the land almost as well as a more recent scout would have, and always answered exactly the question Lalli had asked. For these reasons, Lalli liked him very much. He listened to the list of details Antti was giving him, remembering well the area they applied to, and informed him that there was a clearing within it that Lalli felt was particularly strong with spirits. He would need time with them, a night of invocation that they might move elsewhere, before the napalm-slinging heathens could be let at it. Antti asked him if there was alternative work that could be done, and Lalli told him where, in his opinion, it was possible. He told him about the places where they might go easily, and where they might expect to find it thicker than usual with trolls, knowing the other man would remember.

A voice emerged from behind a tent, interrupting the end of their exchange. "Lalli!"

Lalli and Antti both spun to face the source of the noise, and Lalli recognised Emil. The sight of the face behind the letters he'd seen all spring made him realise how much he'd missed it, and he regretted not coming to find him sooner. Well, he had thought they would run into each other eventually without interrupting the busy schedule Lalli had been given, and he had been right. Emil ran up to him, beaming, and had stopped just short of hugging him. "You!" he had begun, before immediately faltering. Lalli had stared at him while he calmed down enough to find his words. "You are here." was what he eventually came out with.

Lalli wasn't sure exactly where else Emil had expected him to be. The fact that Emil was here, far away from his own country, was surely the notable thing, and Lalli said so. Emil had looked at him blankly and said he didn't understand. 

"It's stranger to see you here", said Lalli, more slowly. 

"It is nice to see you also", Emil replied, again smiling broadly. 

Lalli didn't bother to correct him. "Emil. I am busy."

"What?"

Lalli slowed down even more. "Me and Antti. We need to talk, now. I will talk to you. Later."

"Oh." said Emil. He paused. "Uhm. When... later?"

Lalli shrugged. "I will find you."

"You will find... me. Ok." Yes, that was what Lalli had said.

Emil retreated across the camp, and Lalli and Antti finished their conversation. When they were done, Antti flicked his head in the direction Emil had wandered off in. "I didn't know that Swedish boy spoke Finnish. How do you know him?"

"We travelled together last winter. And I'm not sure I would say he speaks Finnish."

Antti sucked his lips in slightly. "More than the rest of his unit, unless they also have some surprises for me."

Lalli was slightly taken aback. "They all only speak Swedish? When they've all come here, on purpose?"

"They speak Icelandic to me, I speak Icelandic to them."

Lalli supposed it made sense. Tuuri had described a system like this, when she had tried to convince him to learn Icelandic, years ago. His eyes roved across the camp, looking for a tuft of the blond shade that he had once been able to pick out of the Silent World from a mile away. There were a few people in this camp who looked a bit like Emil from the back, and he memorised the differences between them so he would not have to think about it again. Finally, Lalli located his target, nodded a farewell at Antti, and trotted over to him. 

"Emil."

Emil looked up at him. "Hei."

Lalli tried to think of a simple question to ask him now that he was here, or any question at all. He wasn't used to communications with Emil starting just because one of them wanted to, or in anything resembling plain Finnish. The closest thing to a normal interaction they'd ever had was Emil following Lalli to wherever he had gone to eat his horrible porridge and sitting in silence while they ate it. 

Lalli supposed that was something.

"Have you eaten dinner?"

"What?"

"Do you need food?"

"Oh! Yes. 'Dinner'. Let's go."

Lalli didn't try to get any more out of him during their meal. The two of them sat by the lake - Emil had mangled the word "järvi" so badly that it had taken Lalli three attempts to work out that was where he was suggesting they went - and seperately contemplated the swans. Despite knowing full well of the power of Tuoni's birds, Lalli had always thought there was something funny about the deceptiveness of their grace. If Emil had been able to understand, he would have shared the thought he always had about how madly they paddled underneath the surface to maintain their effortless-looking glide. He decided to make a habit of finding Emil for mealtimes. Despite the hell they had been in the last time, he had somehow missed this.


	5. Chapter 5

Lalli did not want to be in this office. He would have picked most of the places in the world he knew of over this office. It was crowded, and unexpected, and everyone was yelling. In Icelandic. Emil was there for some reason, and the two of them were having to stand there in silence while others argued.  
  
Today was meant to be a day in which Lalli was returning to night scouting for a little while, and he had set off from his room expecting to soon be with the trees, and his work, and as close to quiet as summer could be. His hopes of a single normal night had been pulverised when he had gone past Virpi's office and had her almost run into him on her way out. She had reacted to his presence with great relief - a definite first - then told him she needed him to run very, very fast and fetch someone who spoke good Swedish. He had done this for her, first running to the skalds' office in the hope that someone would still be there, and had found Jaana finishing something on her own. Once he had made it through her grumbling at being interrupted, waited for her to put away her papers, and delivered her to Virpi's office, he had been jerked back from his attempt to leave the mixed Swedish and Icelandic conversation when Virpi grabbed him by the arm and told him they also needed an Icelandic-speaking mage. Lalli had pulled his arm back and scowled, thinking that whatever the need for all these people was, it didn't sound good. He had been extremely correct.  
  
When Lalli had finally arrived back at Virpi's office with Onni in tow, he had been greeted by Virpi and that loud Swedish captain, Stella, locked in some kind of argument. He didn't understand a word of what they were saying, but the way they held themselves was exactly reminiscent of two sled dogs that someone should be acting to keep apart. Emil had been stood behind Stella, doing his best to shrink into the wall, while Jaana stared from the sides at the two older women arguing.  
  
_"Á Sviþjóð myndum við vera í næstu viku og við höfum gefið þér nógu af tíma að gera...helgisiðina þína."_ Stella was chopping one hand into her other palm then waving a thought to the side, frustration palpable.  
  
_"Ég kann að meta tileinkunina þína, Stella mín, en kannski hefur þú notað eftir að við erum ekki á Svíþjóð!"_ Virpi crossed her arms.  
  
Onni interrupted with a question, in a tone of relative calm, although Lalli could feel that he was already deeply unhappy with whatever Stella had just said. Virpi turned to answer it, giving a lengthy explanation while gesturing first at Stella, then at Emil, who flinched at the sight of the conversation turning to him. Onni's eyebrows furrowed, then lifted, and he was corralled into giving some kind of explanation to Stella. There were a lot of words, and Virpi and Stella were still glowering at each other, and Onni's resignedly patient tone with Stella was accomplishing very little. Lalli's attempts to follow the direction of the conversation by body language alone became totally overwhelming, and he responded by screwing his eyes shut and putting his hands over his ears until he heard, somewhere behind his self-imposed barriers, the sound of Finnish again.  
  
"Jaana, tell him that he isn't going home. We, at least, believe he did the right thing, although if he acts independently again rather than coming straight to me, it will be a different story."  
  
"Tell him yourself."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You can tell him! Just say it slowly. Small words."  
  
Lalli opened his eyes to Virpi addressing Emil. The expression portrayed by Emil's entire body reminded Lalli very much of a rabbit he'd met a few weeks ago and whose skin had since been added to the hoard on top of his cupboard. He felt really quite bad for him.  
  
"You."  
  
Emil just stared at Virpi.  
  
"Do you understand Finnish?"  
  
He made a small motion with his hand, his fingers a hair apart. "A little."  
  
"Well then. Listen. You are not" - she enunciated the negative with crystal clarity - "going home."  
  
Emil nodded, but looked extremely confused.  
  
"You did a good thing."  
  
He blinked. "Did you say 'good'?"  
  
"Yes. It's good that the work stopped."  
  
Emil nodded again. "Good that the work stopped. I understand."  
  
"Good. I need you to understand" - here she raised a finger - "one more thing. Very important."  
  
"One more thing. OK."  
  
"Next time - do you understand, 'next time'?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"If 'next time' happens, first you tell me. Do not do it like this. Do you understand?"  
  
Emil nodded again, eyes wide and earnest. "If it happens again, I first tell you. Clear."  
  
Stella was standing there fuming anew at the conversation no longer including her, and Jaana told her something in Swedish. It didn't change her expression at all. When she gestured and snapped an order at Emil, even Lalli's limited understanding of what she said covered the fact that she was ordering him back to camp with her. Emil followed her out, still cowed but significantly less miserable. Once the Swedes had left, Virpi sank back against her desk, putting her face in her hands and letting out a long noise of absolute frustration.  
  
Jaana spoke. "That woman is impossible."  
  
 Virpi replied with her voice muffled by her palms. "Typical fucking Swedes." She briefly dug her knuckles into her eye sockets, repeating her frustrated keen, then stood up, her lapse in professionalism over.  
  
Onni still had a face like distant thunder. "What exactly happened here today, Virpi?"  
  
Virpi took a deep breath and exhaled totally before taking another one and speaking. "So, Stella marched into my office today with that boy in tow asking for space on a boat to send him home. Apparently there was some kind of insubordination. Then, when I ask for details, it turns out to be to do with tampering with equipment. Of course I want to hear, from him, exactly what the hell he's done, but he doesn't speak any Icelandic and his captain won't be clear with me."  
  
Onni nodded, gesturing for her to go on.  
  
Virpi continued. "So I get Jaana in here to translate, and I discover that the equipment he tampered with was going to be used tonight, when you and I both know that the mages have clearly halted work until further notice. They know this too, of course, but apparently they thought they could get a little extra done without any harm."  
  
She gestured aimlessly in exasperation. "Every summer. Always the same, somewhere in Finland. We're not even out of May yet!"  
  
Onni scowled. "Then Emil did well, I suppose, although I hope nothing has been irreparably damaged. I wouldn't like to think we have someone here who thinks he can dispense expensive justice on whatever he likes."  
"I don't think it's quite like that." said Jaana quietly.  
  
Virpi continued as though she hadn't heard it. "Apparently it's all quite reversible, although it'll take a couple of days to completely clear it out."  
  
"Good. I will say, it is clear we would not have had a good time, had they continued at the pace they like to keep."  
  
Virpi met Onni's gaze. "Yes, I believe it. So his name's Emil? I gather you know this boy, then?"  
  
Everyone in the room besides Virpi made some affirmative noise. "Well then. Which of you has been teaching him Finnish?"  
  
"Mostly me, I think." That was Jaana.  
  
Lalli also chipped in. "He started learning when we travelled together last winter."  
  
"Interesting." Even Lalli could tell she really was not interested in their mutual travel history. "Now, all of you, get out of my office. I've had more than enough nonsense for the day."  
  
Once the three of them had exited onto the street, Jaana started to laugh. "He could have done this in literally any other way, and not dealt with over an hour of thinking he was getting sent home in disgrace."  
  
Lalli snorted. That much was true.  
  
"And alienating his entire unit, as well. Well, I guess at least he knows the value of not pissing off our mages."  
  
As well he should, thought Lalli. Although it sounded like Emil had taken a problem-solving approach here that made one of his "special recipe" Molotov cocktails look subtle, he had clearly learned a healthy respect of Finnish magic last winter, and the experience of dealing with other Swedes had made Lalli begin to appreciate that.  
  
Leaving Keuruu at the wrong time had already destroyed his nightly plan, so Lalli began his route by circling around the edges of the Cleanser camp instead of heading straight into the woods. He wasn't sure what he was expecting exactly, but what he found was Emil, digging a ditch by himself. Lalli was sure that they didn't need new latrines yet, and clearly remembered that they usually dug them as a group to save time, but there he was, completely alone and grumpily shifting dirt out of a ditch of surprising depth for the time he'd had.  
  
He contemplated Emil's lonely punishment - he could think of no other reason for it - from a distance. Knowingly or not, the favour he'd done Lalli was huge, and it didn't seem fair that he should be getting the opposite of a reward for it. Searching the ground, he came up with a tiny prize, and approached Emil with it in hand. It took several minutes of Lalli squatting by the edge of Emil's ditch for him to notice he was there, and when he finally approached, he didn't seem to know what to do with Lalli's outstretched palm. Lalli pulled Emil's hand up, opened it for him, then placed the tiny plant in it.  
  
"Kihokki."  
  
"What?"  
  
"New word. Kihokki."  
  
Emil looked at the sundew and turned his palm slightly, letting the light fall on the delicate drops that covered it. "Kiiholki."  
  
"No. Kihokki."  
  
Emil repeated the name again, this time correctly. "It is, uhm. Beautiful."  
  
"It eats meat."  
  
Emil wrinkled his nose.  
  
"It's the only plant in the world that does."  
  
"Oh." A pause. "Do you want... that I keep this?"  
  
Lalli tapped Emil's forehead lightly. "Remember it."  
  
Emil seemed to finally have understood what Lalli was trying to do, his face lighting up in the way that it always did when he realised Lalli was trying to help him. "I will remember! Thank you!"  
  
Lalli closed Emil's hand around the little sundew. "Goodnight."  
  
The sound of digging didn't resume as he started off into the forest. Emil was watching him leave. His oversight was of no use to Lalli here, but still, the gaze on his back and Emil's actions earlier nestled in the soft spot in Lalli's heart that he had carved out last winter, giving off their own strange warmth. Lalli felt the cool of the forest's long shadows, heard the thick whisper of branch against branch, and let the warmth sit as he settled into the long run of the night's work.


	6. Chapter 6

Virpi's opinion had apparently been the final word, and Stella hadn't been able to stay completely livid at Emil forever, although Emil was grateful for the fact that since "the incident", the Finnish and Swedish crews had been set to work together even more closely than before. Now, when they broke for lunch, it wasn't so conspicuous for him to avoid his own crew's subtle frostiness and Marcus's wizard impressions, quietly sitting with a few of the friendlier Finns, or Lalli if he was around. And aside from the odd block of being back on night scouting, he was around surprisingly often. Emil started to expect to see him most days, moving at the speed of his easy loping run from one small job to another, and found that they had started to seek each other out whenever he passed through.  
  
Ever since the sundew - Emil had carefully labelled it with its Finnish name, then kept the withering stalk near his sleeping mat, because just as Jaana always said, it was good to go over new vocabulary - Lalli's visits had involved sharing little pieces of what he found in his constant vigil over the forest. Over the next few weeks, among all the words for incendiary devices, implements of destruction, and all the ways to wield them that he was picking up from working beside Finns all day, his collection of items grew and expanded his vocabulary - sometimes even beyond what he could name in Swedish - into the world Lalli knew best.  
  
The leader of the Finnish Cleanser unit, a man named Antti whose bald head, wiry little body and goatee reminded Emil of some kind of storybook gnome, started to sometimes address him directly instead of waiting for the instructions to filter through the Icelandic speakers to the rest of the Swedes. At first, it was just the names of specific items, clearly pronounced, requested simply. Emil delivered these messages, and found that Antti remembered surprisingly well everything that Emil had been seen to understand. Somewhere in the past few weeks, some connection had come to life, and the written words he'd stuffed into his brain back in Sweden started to feel like they corresponded to the all-vowels spoken versions people yelled at each other across a burning field. The gap between what he could write and say began to close.  
  
A couple of weeks after Antti had started speaking Finnish to him, Emil found himself describing a plan to Stella that contained a number of people, several points in the forest, a list of items and a question about how they were doing for lunch supplies. He felt a certain satisfaction when he realised he had not only gotten all of this right, but had become reliable enough with it to act as a messenger boy.  
  
The next time the activities stopped for mage work, Emil had gone back into town and relayed this achievment to Jaana. He realised that he couldn't actually repeat exactly what Antti had said, and she had cheerfully reassured him both that it was quite normal to understand more than he spoke in this kind of situation, and a good thing to be getting the meaning from full phrases. Her optimism about his progress was nice. After the incident where Jaana's translation had saved him, he had been making a beeline for her office upon arrival in Keuruu much more often than before. At first, she had done all the talking, but soon the others began to chip in to finally introduce themselves. Miri's face was soft, her hair was jealousy-inducingly shiny for how long she kept it, and her hands were always busy. Laura was stocky, with eyes a brighter blue than any sky, and was always the first to embellish Jaana's jokes and prod them into something slightly more outrageous. Sini was the last to talk. Her intense shyness combined with her pale hair, willowy limbs and large, worried eyes reminded him more than a little of the way Lalli appeared from a distance.  
  
At some point, he learned that they all lived together as well as working together, and had banded together in the skalds' training as young children. He could see the truth of it in the way they made space for each other, knowing each other's preferences before asking. It was a kind of friendship Emil had never known for himself, one where you fit around and grew into each other like trees. He remembered the desk still standing in their office, taking up more space than they really had to spare.  
  
He began to see them outside of their work. He ran into Jaana in the street, and she insisted he keep her company as she took her sandwich to an open square for some fresh air and people-watching. He truly hoped that a few of her full-mouthed observations about the people in town had not reached the ears of their targets, but every one of her snarky comments was incredibly funny. Emil had to bite his knuckle to keep from laughing too loudly when Stella happened to pass by and Jaana asked him if he, too, had noticed there was something about her eyes that reminded one of the vacant, big-eyed stares on the whitefish they processed daily by the docks. He wasn't sure that Jaana was being entirely fair, but it was nice, knowing that her treatment of him a few weeks ago had completely ruined Jaana's opinion of her. He began to think he might be able to call Jaana a friend.  
  
The time till Midsummer grew shorter. Emil walked through Keuruu again. Laura called to him, and he found her by a pen of sheep that had for some reason been brought into town. He learned what the reason was when she began to tell him about the breeding program she spent all her so-called free time researching and corresponding on. He had not the first idea about animal husbandry, but when she was done, he had been thoroughly enlightened regarding the difficulty of ensuring Rash immunity in sheep, the wondrously prolific lambing of the Finnish breed, the logistics of long-distance sheep semen delivery, and the frustration of correspondence with the other coordinator all the way over in Iceland. She had looked fondly over her little flock, all marked with different paints, and said "I'm glad there's no shortage this year, my jumper finally died on me this spring. Miri told me that now I have enough fleece, if I finish spinning it up for her she'll make me one, and hers are always the best." Emil thought about the way that you could buy yarn and even clothes in Mora, pre-made, sometimes by a machine, and realised that the outhouses and freestanding water containers were just the beginning of how different this place was to Sweden.  
  
When he found himself in their office again, being entrusted with the many complicated steps required to get the back of Laura's hair exactly right while Miri ever-so-casually quizzed him about the size of his feet and whether he owned enough socks, the realisation dawned that he had found a group of people who not only tolerated him, but genuinely liked him. The feeling was deeply mutual.  
  
"Nokkonen", said Lalli, and Emil luckily recognised the nettle for what it was before he could drop the stinging leaves into his hand. Lalli smirked, rolled up a leaf with an expert movement of his fingers, and ate it without flinching.  
  
Emil picked a sprig of his own later, cursing as he realised that he couldn't quite replicate Lalli's smooth way of taking them with neither gloves nor injury, and labelled it for his collection.  
  
When a long day in the field had turned into a dull evening, he had sat on his bedroll and rearranged every item he'd acquired. Half an hour into the arrangement and rearrangement of his hoard of different leaves, flowers, chunks of bark, and tufts of animal hair, he realised with a sense of hopelessness that perhaps Siv wasn't all wrong when she said she could tell what he was feeling long before he himself did.


	7. Chapter 7

Miri was alone in the skalds' office, deep in concentration. She had finished her work early and pulled out the sweater she was working on while she waited for everyone else, then gotten so absorbed in a row of colourwork that she had told them to go ahead without her anyway so she could keep her flow. Laura had made her enough yarn for a thick, slightly oversized sweater and Miri had spent several hours picking through her precious hoard of books on the topic, poring over charts to find what blend of patterns and the mix of natural colours she'd been given would flatter and suit her friend. When Laura had noticed the little row of russet-coloured sheep appear on the hem of Miri's project, she had reacted with enough delight to fuel Miri through the whole dull experience of knitting a mostly blank body and pair of arms. She looked out the window. Perhaps she should head home soon, but first, a few more rows of the little hearts and sheep that began her yoke pattern.  
  
She heard a knock on the door. It was a bit late for visitors. "Who is it?"  
  
"It's me!" replied a familiar voice in Swedish. Emil was visiting again. "Come in then!" replied Miri in the same language.  
  
Emil entered. "Where is everyone?"  
  
"At home, where they should be. I got too absorbed in my knitting again."  
  
Emil sat down opposite her, straddling Sini's usual chair and resting his arms on the back of it. He looked exhausted and slightly charred. "My arms hurt!"  
  
Miri hummed sympathetically. "Mine would too after what you Cleansers do all day." Jaana, she thought to herself, certainly wouldn't be complaining about the results of any of it, given what she'd said about "the view" last time he left their office. Miri wasn't nearly as invested in where Emil grew muscle, but nobody had exactly disagreed. Even Laura, who Miri had only ever known to be interested in women, admitted she was distinctly jealous of his hair. "How does he keep it like that, living in a tent?" Sini had asked, and Miri smiled at the memory of everyone's outlandish theories about bribing the mages into some kind of hair magic.  
  
She let the silence stretch comfortably, like a cat in the sun. Emil rested his head on his arms and watched her hands move, tired enough to be totally entranced by the repetitive flick of her needles. Miri noticed that she'd knitted some of her hair into the row she'd just finished. Well, it wouldn't make Laura any colder to have it there, and it was all part of the process. She began to hum softly, a gentle runo that worked itself into the cloth as she sung and picked in rhythm. Miri was not the kind of strong mage that could pass herself through stone or cast her spirit out to fight the demons of the Silent World, but what she left of herself in things had its own power.  
  
Perhaps something about the aim of her quiet magic was evident even to Emil, because when he spoke to ask a question, it was "Miri, how do you tell someone you love them?"  
  
She paused. "In Finnish, you mean?"  
  
He stared at the ground. "I guess that, too."  
  
She picked up a white thread, illustrating the space between two little pairs of sheep. "Usually, one doesn't."  
  
Emil looked up at her in confusion.  
  
In between stitches, and slowly, because she had never been able to explain abstract concepts in her third language in the way Jaana did or Tuuri had, she told him that unlike in Swedish - where one might say that they loved pie, or music, or fishing - to use the word love, or especially the phrase "I love you", in Finnish was such an unambiguous statement it would in almost all situations be a bizarre and overdramatic use of language.  
  
"But if you just want to know how it might be said, the phrase is 'rakastan sinua'. 'Rakastaa', verb, and 'rakkaus', noun."  
  
Emil looked like he was thinking very hard, so she returned to her knitting. They sat together again, the noises of the street outside the only thing audible besides the tapping of Miri's needles and her barely-there whispers.  
  
"Why is the 'you' like that?"  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"It's um. 'Sinua'. I know you say 'sinä' like that sometimes, but why?"  
  
Miri had to put her needles down to think about how to explain it. "I think Jaana has talked to you about this one."  
  
"Probably. Sorry."  
  
"It's the, hmm, _partitiivi._ Partitive."  
  
"Why for this?"  
  
"Well, it hasn't finished happening."  
  
Emil made one of his characteristically sheepish expressions. "You might need to explain a bit more."  
  
She fiddled with her yarn. "If you are not finished doing your action, then the thing to which you are doing it - then it takes this form. When you're busy saying that you love someone, it is not a thing you can be finished with. By nature, it is ongoing."  
  
Emil's only response was to again look deep in thought. She picked up her knitting, suspecting that the grammatical point was not the only thing occupying him, but seeing also that he was very tired from the way he soon returned to staring blankly at her hands moving. The comfortable silence returned.


	8. Chapter 8

Somewhere nestled deep behind the thick knot of voices roused by the summer, the living things and the trolls and the beasts, Lalli could feel a stillness in the world. There had been no real darkness in Keuruu for weeks, and the sun had finally reached the brightest point of the long spiral towards the middle of the sky it attempted every year. There it stood, holding its pattern. Juhannus was coming.  
  
Of course, the Cleansers were more than happy to help build the bonfires. Apparently in Sweden they did much the same thing. Perhaps there was hope for them. Lalli had watched one of them come into Keuruu after a mishap with equipment. An awful, obnoxious man, always mocking Emil for what he had done weeks prior, who had acted according to his nature and of course had seen injury. He had yelled first in pain, then in objection, trying to sit up in his stretcher as he realised it was Onni approaching him. Onni sang anyway, the runo that would stop blood, and when the man had seen the wound that was soaking his shirt dry up as if it were already a day old, his face had turned from scorn to pure terror. He avoided Onni, now. Lalli couldn't see why he acted the way he did. But he wasn't waving his hands at Emil anymore.  
  
Emil was keeping everything Lalli brought him. "So I remember the word!", he said, smiling like he and his golden hair were in a competition with the early summer sky. And he had been remembering. Now, when Lalli asked him questions, he got an answer. He had been fond of the Emil without words, and in a way also the Emil of the dream world with too many. The Emil that emerged when he found his words slowly, by the feel of every leaf in Lalli's forest, was his favourite.  
  
On Juhannus eve, Lalli walked by the lake in the glow of the bright midnight. The mist rose up and hung above it in pink and gold, illuminated from every side but above. The swans were still there, gliding and calling among the golden light.  
Lalli had finally tried to explain his thoughts on them a few days prior when he and Emil again ate lunch by the lake.  
  
"You think they are swimming like this, you know..." - Lalli had gestured with a hand moving straight as an arrow - "but under the water, their feet have to go so fast. It's ridiculous."  
  
Emil had looked at him for a long time, then back at the swans. "I had not thought about that."  
  
"Isn't it strange?"  
  
It had taken a little while for Emil to work out his answer to that. "I think you're right."  
  
At first Lalli had begun to think that despite the odd compatibility they'd always had, Emil was yet another person who would never get why Lalli found anything funny. As they were picking up their bowls of soup and making to head back, a swan had swum nearby, and Emil had spoken to it in a conspiratorial whisper. "You have a secret, swan. I know what it is." Lalli had smiled to himself, poked Emil's cheek, and told him they were going to be late. 


	9. Chapter 9

Emil leaned against the wall of the skalds' office, smiling blankly at the rapid four-way Finnish conversation that was going on in front of him. After four days in the field, during which they had made enough progress to need the entire camp moved on, he had been left with a lot of questions about what Antti had been calling out to him during transport and had taken the excuse to visit once they were back for another break. When Jaana had begun to claim it was "one where you just have to remember each time", Miri had cut in to disagree, and the whole group had switched into Finnish for a complex back-and-forth of examples and counterexamples as they tried to work out between them what the rule actually was. Finally, they appeared to agree, and Jaana turned back to address Emil in Swedish. "So basically, it's sort of - you're "on" a vehicle if you can stand up in it, more or less, and "in" it if you can't? It's not that different from any other language I know, if I think about it, it just feels different because it's all in the cases."  
  
Emil propped his notebook up against his arm and wrote down what she'd said. Jaana waited for him to be done, then asked him if he was going to be particularly busy tonight. When he shrugged and expressed ambivalence about the Cleansers' evening plans, she made the decision for him. "Great. We need a helping hand. We're going to be done in half an hour, don't go anywhere."  
  
That was how Emil ended up following the four of them across Keuruu to a workshop and watching them react with delight to a large table that was waiting there. After they had finished thanking the person who had waited to let them in, they corralled Emil into their attempts to pick it up and work out how best to carry it. In the mostly-Finnish chatting, Laura observed that she was very sure this would not fit through the door of their house.  
  
"Can't we take it there in pieces and assemble it inside?" Emil asked, replying in Swedish so that he didn't have to waste their time trying to express "in pieces".  
  
"Emil! You understood!" Jaana beamed at him with pride, and Emil realised that despite all the time she'd spent teaching him, she'd never seen him have to follow a conversation. Her expression shifted to a calculating one as she looked at the joins on the table. "Help me make some notes of how this fits together. Hopefully nothing's been glued down too much."  
  
After a few minutes of effort, they had managed to detach the legs and a few little struts that required nails removed. Jaana looked over the diagram Emil had produced. "Emil, that's incomprehensible. Don't worry though, I think between us we can work it out." They made the executive decision that the now-absent workshop staff would probably not mind them borrowing a cart until tomorrow morning, piled the legs and struts into it, then set off with Laura pulling the cart and the other four people following behind, taking turns to carry ends of the tabletop.  
  
"Emil! Emil, this is the place."  
  
It was a small wooden house much like any other in Keuruu, although the door had been lovingly embellished with stenciled-in images of flowers, leaves and hearts in a dull red paint. It was indeed definitely far too small to get the entire table through, and even getting the tabletop in was a bit of a struggle. Once everything was inside and everyone had gone to kick off their shoes, Emil made as if to start building, before he was shouted down by everyone else present. He heard "It's not a military operation in here! Sit down!" from Jaana, and saw her dissapear upstairs.  
  
He obliged, sitting on one of the completely mismatched chairs that littered the kitchen. The room wasn't big, per se, but seemed to fill the entire first floor of the building. "There's no older table, is there."  
  
Laura shook her head. "We've been trying to get hold of one for about... two years, now?"  
  
"What were you eating off? The floor?"  
  
She shrugged with a "what can you do" expression and looked behind him. He followed her gaze to find Jaana, who had reappeared downstairs waddling with the weight of an extremely large bottle which contained volumes of gloriously dark liquid with a thin layer of sediment at the bottom. She placed it down on the counter, and proclaimed "House project wine! You're about to be inducted into a tradition!"  
  
The "tradition" apparently consisted purely of drinking large amounts of blackcurrant wine while doing any kind of project for the house. Well, the name wasn't misleading, and perhaps explained why the stencils on the door were a little crooked. Despite Emil's awful diagram, the table was reassembled within half an hour and stood up to everyone's attempts to wobble it. "As long as nobody dances on it too vigorously, we'll be fine" proclaimed Jaana with confidence. Emil offered to leave now that he had made himself useful, and was once again exhorted to sit down. The chairs were pulled up to the new table, and the wine with all their glasses was placed on it. Emil took the chance to ask about the violin he'd seen hanging against the wall. It looked ancient, probably even from the old world, the fretboard darkened and slightly dipped in places from years upon years of constant use. He wondered aloud who the player was.  
  
Three heads turned towards Sini, who retreated immediately back into the shyness she'd had when Emil first met her. A chorus of "You're really good, Sini!" and "You'll promise not to tell people at parties she can play, right, Emil?" slowly convinced her to pick it up. Emil had seen violin players many times as a child, and even had someone try to teach him a few times. He was sure that there was something about it being important to keep it in just the right position on your chin, but Sini just propped it against her knee and began to knock out a polka as if she did it every day. A combination of the wine and Emil being genuinely impressed led to her playing and even improvising embellishments to extra tunes with more and more confidence, and the others called out requests.  
  
After several hours of alternating conversation and Sini's violin, Emil commented on the wine being much nicer than anything he'd tried to make himself, or indeed anything the brewery in town made. This started Jaana on the topic of all the other things in Keuruu she could run better herself, a list which turned out to be both long and extremely variable. Laura joined in a little, especially where Jaana picked on how much paperwork Virpi burdened the skalds with on a daily basis, while Sini and Miri watched with exasperated fondness. When Emil tried to clarify something about Jaana's lengthy opinions on the barley harvest, Miri exhorted him not to encourage her. "She's like this every time you get two glasses inside her! You should have heard the way she and Tuuri used to go on together..."  
  
Jaana fell totally silent, eyes going from the faces of the people around her to the depths of her cup. Miri trailed off, her mouth closing. Emil didn't know what to say. Compared to the casual rowdiness that had reigned seconds before, the silence was painfully keen.  
  
"She was pretty good at talking about most things."  
  
Apparently he'd said something anyway.  
  
The silence stretched for another moment which could not have been longer than half a minute, but which was certainly long enough for Emil to fully embrace feeling like a jerk, yet again.  
  
Jaana placed her hands around her glass and continued to stare into it. "You know, Emil, we don't... actually know exactly what happened to her."  
  
Because Emil was apparently the world's most thoughtless person, he had not connected the dots of Lalli and Onni's general silence and the fact that usually, people have to talk in order to tell people how one of their best friends had died. He took a deep breath. "I'm so sorry."  
  
Jaana looked around at the others, and the four of them seemed to reach some silent agreement. "Emil, would it be... I understand that she was  your friend as well, but..." - oh fuck, she was going to cry - "she wasn't, you know, tell me she didn't..."  
  
Emil responded. "She killed herself before she could become a troll." He paused. "She drowned herself in the ocean."  
  
Sini abruptly and loudly started to cry. Emil felt a knot of panic twist in his stomach. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"  
  
Jaana interrupted him. "No. Please. Emil, we have been wondering for... for months."  
  
Slowly, with long pauses punctuated mostly by Sini's anguished sobbing into Miri's shoulder and Miri's muttering back as she stroked her hair, Emil found a way to answer all the questions they had. Jaana did most of the asking, and he gave answers with a bluntness he hoped was more clear than cruel. When they were done, he felt like he should volunteer something, and for a horrible moment thought he'd done the wrong thing in telling them about how he was sure he would be dead without her, that she had held the expedition together with her language skills and constant resourceful optimism, that she had kept working to lend her expertise until the hour she died. It was the last straw in Jaana giving in to real wet tears, but instead of telling him to leave she pushed her chair back, circled the table and embraced him in a hug. Emil hugged her back. For the first time, it truly sunk in that the first time he had met the four women that had quickly become some of his best friends, he had been entirely defined by being some guy who had been near their friend when she died.  
  
The amount of time they'd had for him suddenly made a great deal of sense, and their acceptance of him as a friend in his own right gained a new dimension of meaning. It struck Emil that he was sitting at a table that in her life before the mission, Tuuri had wished for, but would now never see.  
  
Now he was crying, too.  
  
Jaana eventually returned to her seat, and Miri stood up. "I think now is the time for no more wine." Wiping the tears off her face, she gathered up the glasses, and moved the big bottle back to the countertop. She lit the stove, and everyone watched mutely as she slowly brought a kettle full of water to the boil. When the tea was made, they all drank it in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Emil finally spoke up. "I suppose I should head back soon. It's really, really late."  
  
Jaana spoke with the slow deliberateness of someone trying not to cry again. "Ah. We have a spare room, actually."  
  
"Is it really ok to use it?"  
  
She attempted a smile, weakly and profoundly sadly, but genuinely. "She wasn't really one for wasting what you have."  
  
"I guess she wasn't."  
  
Upstairs was cramped, but there they were, five little rooms. Emil opened the door to Tuuri's old room and saw that like her desk, it hadn't been cleared out. A shirt lay on the floor, covered in dust illuminated by the summer night's soft glow through her one small window. Emil flopped down on Tuuri's old bed and was blissfully grateful for the fact he'd come from a day of manual labour, sleep creeping up on him even through everything and eventually taking him into its arms.


	10. Chapter 10

Lalli didn't know exactly when every couple he saw had started to make him think of Emil - his general avoidance of crowds meant it had probably taken a while for him to notice the pattern - but it had been two weeks now since he had worked out what it meant. Every time he caught a glance of someone's small affectionate gesture he immediately thought of the way Emil would smooth down his hair, or act out the strange little combination of eye contact and arm touching that seemed to be necessary for every goodbye. He would wish it was happening to him. His mind had gone into overdrive producing the first doubts he'd ever had about how much Emil liked him.  
  
He knew that he had never had cause to question whether or not Emil, for whatever strange reason Emil ever did things, always had time for him. He felt that valuing, and held it close, even independently of the other thoughts about Emil that he was slowly acknowledging spent a lot of time in his head. The thing was, though, that when he turned those thoughts over - held them up to the light of logic and tapped them to see what rattled inside - he found them to be exactly based on what Lalli himself lacked. Lalli was not likeable enough to pick up friends in Keuruu within weeks of knowing them. Lalli's shoulders did not fill out his shirt in a way that was both nice to look at and oddly calming. It seemed ridiculous that anyone could think of the strange, narrow face Lalli saw reflected in lakes and puddles and feel like... this.  
  
He didn't know what to do about "this". It took up space in his head. He kept treating Emil exactly the same way he had before, because it seemed to make sense. Emil hadn't asked for any of "this". When they had finished their delicate sprawl over the forest floor and ripened to bright little points, Lalli still delivered him a handful of tiny wild strawberries. Emil solemnly pronounced "metsämansikka" after his example and offered him some as he began to eat them. Picking berries out of his hand made "this" worse.  
He went and talked to Antti. Not about anything like Emil, but about their paths through the forest, because he and Antti both understood them well, and spoke plainly about them to one another. Antti was easy, and even when there was no more work to discuss, would remark only on the topics that their mutual experience referred to. The less work-related the conversation, the more slowly he would speak, as if he was savouring the feel in his mouth of getting to speak of fishing and the weather.  
  
"It's a warm July", Antti had said, levelling his gaze at the edge of the forest. "August will be very active."  
  
"We have enough mages to feel them coming", Lalli had replied, knowing in his bones the truth of what Antti had said.  
  
"I suppose they are not the only ones who enjoy the heat. We might as well decide to as well, or we'll miss it more in the winter."  
  
This was the kind of thought Lalli expected from Antti. They sat in silence for an amount of time that was totally indeterminate, aside from being clearly measured out in the sound of them slapping any midges that tried to explore their arms.  
  
"I hear Jouni is brewing up a batch of sahti."  
  
Also the kind of news he expected. Lalli stuck things into the conversation in much the same way he would casually toss twigs into a fire. "By the smell as you pass the brewery, I think he has also fixed his still."  
  
"I remember when he last made a batch of vodka. Terrible explosion."  
  
"Well, we have heard nothing yet."  
  
"It would be good, while the air is warm but still so fresh, if Jouni finished his projects."  
  
Lalli agreed, the slight intake of breath nearly inaudible.  
  
He visited Onni, and again said nothing about what occupied him. He gave his cousin a pile of the skins he had hoarded, materials well in advance for a new winter hat and whatever extra Onni might want to make. Onni was also, in his way, predictable. He sewed hats and pairs of boots from skins, sang prayers, played his kantele, and worried about Lalli in a way that felt like the heat of a small fire at your back. Lalli told him he'd heard Jouni was brewing sahti. Onni paused his stitches to contemplate this and nod approvingly.  
  
The scent of the forest was far more full of unpleasant surprises. The rancid whiff of a troll was almost as likely as the sweet scent of summer's fruit. The floor of the forest finally felt the warmth of the sun, and Lalli was wary.


	11. Chapter 11

Emil had learned about the evening the people in Keuruu had planned relatively late. Lalli had vaguely described a plan for sauna and drinking, and said he didn't see why Emil couldn't leave early if he wanted to. After making a pact to stop each other staying all night, they had walked into town together. Of course, everyone in the unit went to sauna together often, as it soothed the muscle ache of working in the field and made up for the lack of showers anywhere in Keuruu. This time, though, was in celebration of the brewer's recently fixed equipment, and Emil had partaken of some dark juniper-flavoured beer with great enthusiasm. Once he had realised there was vodka too, he had enjoyed the experience of passing a bottle around the sauna, trying to cool the burning of the glass with every trip to the lake. Afterwards, his skin felt soft and warm, and he was very sure that all the things he'd heard about there being nothing to do in Finland were clearly totally incorrect, because everyone here was absolutely lovely and he was having the time of his life. He took another gulp of the fresh beer. Now that he was used to the tinge of juniper, he could drink this like water. It got better with every glass.  
  
He had begun to look for Lalli after somehow losing him in the back-and-forth from sauna to lake to sauna again, then decided to leave him be after he saw him with Onni, the two sitting in what looked like complete silence with a vodka bottle between them. Despite not saying a word, they were getting through it very companionably at a pace that was on the borderline between impressive and worrying. Lalli looked fresh and glowing in the open-necked shirt he'd put on after the sauna. Staring at Lalli was probably a bad idea. Emil drained his glass and went to fill it again.  
  
Emil lost his shirt. How he had done that, he was unsure. He made a plan to find that later. He needed to not smile at Lalli like that every time the two glanced at each other. The object of his attempts at subtle glancing seemed to be having a great time sprawling back, finishing off the bottle and watching the group of men who had started to drunkenly sing some maudlin song, so Emil would likely only be bothering him. It made some kind of sense to Emil that silently people-watching was what Lalli would do at parties. He decided that he should probably find someone else to talk to.  
  
Jaana was standing together with Miri and Sini, and as Emil approached the two of them immediately cleared off, leaving Jaana sitting alone. Emil watched their retreating backs. "How come they're leaving?"  
  
Jaana just smiled giddily at him. She was leaning against the table with all the grace of a freshly hatched duckling. "Oh they have stuff to do! You should sit here. I wanna ask you something."  
  
Emil mirrored her lean and took another sip of the juniper beer. "Have you seen my shirt?"  
  
Jaana's grin spread even wider. "Nope. That's not important though, you definitely don't need that. So... Emil, are you planning on heading back to your camp tonight?"  
  
Emil nodded. "I think so!"  
  
Jaana was leaning in and starting to ask another question when Lalli tapped Emil on the shoulder and said something Emil couldn't quite make out over the noise. Jaana's face went from giddy to deeply annoyed within the space of a second, and she replied to him with a tone that matched. Suddenly, Emil remembered that he had told Lalli to tell him when they were leaving. It seemed like that time, and besides, he'd been waiting for the chance to enjoy Lalli's company all night. He slung an arm around Lalli, taking the opportunity to stroke his hair and resisting the urge to caress where his striking collarbones caught the light. All of Lalli's angles caught the glow of the room they were in and it was an intense effort not to stare. He patted Jaana on the shoulder. "Tell me tomorrow! I'm gonna go get an early night, so I guess I can find you before I gotta do anything!" She did not look mollified. "Sorry! I will talk to you in the morning. OK? Come meet me outside the uhhh, the brewhouse. I promise. Bye!"  
  
Emil let himself be pulled away, a bit sad to be leaving all of the wonderful friends he had here, but Lalli leading him off wasn't too bad. Jaana yelled something about drinking water. Good advice, probably. Lalli was still distracting as ever as they passed the threshold and emerged into the cool night air. He completely gave up on finding his shirt.  



	12. Chapter 12

Lalli was in a strange mood. His night had begun about as well as a party could, sitting with Onni and enjoying his easy company with a side of getting as efficiently drunk as was possible. Emil was there and loudly, sloppily drunk, trying to make friends with everybody in a mix of increasingly broken Finnish and enthusiastic Swedish. Lalli contemplated his antics with a certain fondness. Onni handed him the bottle before going to congratulate Jouni on his perfectly working still, then been waylaid on the other side of the room when he noticed someone had brought an accordion. Watching Onni reach a plateau of drunkenness and begin to lead people in singing _Täällä Pohjantähden alla_ was another thing Lalli contemplated, from a safe distance, with fondness.  
  
Emil had circled and stared for the entire evening, giving him looks that made the proverbial cat around hot porridge seem forthright. Lalli didn't know what to make of it. He knew full well what he wanted to make of it, but his honesty with himself was double-edged, and he knew that his wanting things to be so was never enough for them to happen. The part of him made optimistic by the warm glow of vodka produced the thought that Emil seemed to like it when people asked him about his feelings. There was seemingly no topic that made him as uncomfortable as most. Perhaps it would be good to know what the truth was, and perhaps it would be possible to ask.  
  
Lalli sat with this thought, letting Emil's glances register as they occurred. In the corners of the room, some people were moving on from the usual drunken revelry to touching each other.  
  
Well, he had promised he would tell him when it was getting late. Emil had lost his shirt somwhere and was starting an earnest conversation with his friend in the skald's office, managing to spill his drink a little as he leaned against the table. He was clearly too far gone to remember by himself, and Lalli was forming the idea of maybe asking him a few things as he escorted him back to his camp. Lalli tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting the two of them, and ignored the look she gave him. "We have to leave now."  
  
Jaana was a picture of annoyance. "Right now?"  
  
Lalli just stared at her. "Not all of us can sit down all day if we are tired tomorrow."  
  
Emil grinned, leaned onto Lalli and laced his fingers into his hair, turning back to give a lengthy apology in Swedish and pat Jaana on the shoulder. Despite the fact he was clearly very sociably drunk, he didn't seem averse to Lalli dragging him away. Nonetheless, once they exited the building and the slight cool of the night air cleared out the thickest of the cobwebs in Lalli's head, he started to feel like maybe he was going to stick to what he was meant to be doing. Maybe now wasn't the time. He felt Emil's hand brush against his and without thinking, found himself holding it. Emil didn't let go, so he didn't either. They walked together in the vague direction of the road out, and found themselves going past the alley that led to Lalli's small room. Emil stopped. "You can go now. I can search my tent. I don't want you awake longer than you want."  
  
Lalli didn't let go of his hand. "Emil, can I talk to you about something?"  
  
Emil's thumb was making little circular motions on Lalli's hand. "Talk about what?"  
  
Lalli looked around and noticed that they were not the only ones slowly making their way home. "Uh. Do you want to come inside?"  
  
Emil followed him without argument and so they ended up sitting on Lalli's bed, close enough that Lalli could feel Emil's questioning in everything from the look on his face to the angle of his body. He had been so sure that this wasn't something Emil would ask for, but there he was, still gripping his hand. Anything Lalli might have thought to talk about left his mind.  
  
Lalli wound his fingers into Emil's hair, realising now that they were no longer walking that the sudden sobriety of going into the night air had been mostly an illusion. His veins hummed with the melodies written by the gods of spirits and beer, and Emil's skin and hair were so warm, and so soft, and... as much as he knew he'd made his mind up already about the idea of this, letting it happen was still deeply surreal. In the dim light, he could see Emil's eyes wide and bright with tentative hope. Lalli kissed him, and Emil gasped for a shade of a moment before kissing him back, and it was really as simple as that.  
  
The way Emil planted enthusiastic, sloppy kisses all over his mouth and neck seemed so directionless he wouldn't have been sure what his intentions were, were it not for Emil sprawling himself over him and jabbing a very obvious erection into his thigh. It was nice, actually. Even nicer once he had rolled on top of Emil, made even the slightest effort to pin him down and realised how instantly he gave himself over to being a pliable mess. All he had to do was employ his tongue with a hint of assertiveness to be rewarded with a sharp breath inwards, a hand going limp in his hair, and legs being loosely wrapped around his waist. It was so easy, and so gratifying, to get absorbed in finding all the spots on his neck and shoulders - working out where to use his lips, and where to use his teeth - that would make him gasp like someone fallen through ice. He was like wax taking the impression of a seal, molding himself around Lalli as warmly and totally, and Lalli felt like he was setting himself in deeper every time he goaded his partner into moaning and digging his clumsy, earnest fingers into his back. Despite Emil being inept with drink, Lalli shivered where his hands began to make their way under his shirt.  
  
When he began to find Emil's groping the wrong kind of distracting, he discovered to his delight that he responded even more to having his hands gently removed from the situation and pinned above his head by one of Lalli's. He ground into Emil with as much deliberate energy as he had, partly for his own gratification - because he was responding to Emil's wordless roiling begging, so hard, and probably this is what all the fuss was about - but still mostly because Emil reacted so strongly every time. It felt like a natural extension of the way Lalli always teased him. It was a tiny bit mean, but Emil seemed to enjoy it an awful lot, and it was definitely a kind of fun Lalli could get used to when he hissed at Emil to keep his hands back and started to work on his torso, discovering new categories of exciting noises in the process. He was experimenting with the pressure of his teeth on Emil's nipples, feeling very much like he could listen to the helpless keening that ensued all night, when he felt a yawn coming on and remembered that there were reasons he couldn't.  
  
He pulled away, groaning in frustration, and sat back on his heels. "I'm... too tired for this, actually."  
  
Emil looked up at him, flushed and dopey grinning and propping himself up on his elbows to follow him. "Huh?"  
  
"I'm tired. I can't do this."  
  
In the faint light of the low summer night sun filtering through the window, he could make out a look of confusion and faint disappointment. "Oh. Okay."  
  
"You can sleep here, if you want."  
  
Emil nodded enthusiastically, still breathing a little heavily and clearly not keen on putting any distance between the two of them. "I do want."  
  
Lalli extracted himself from between Emil's legs and flopped down facing the wall. He felt one of Emil's arms wedge itself between him and the mattress and another slide around to encircle him, then a breathy face burying itself in his hair. "Is it okay?"  
  
Lalli shifted around a little. This was really not how he preferred to sleep, but he'd definitely slept in far less comfortable positions. The warmth at his back and the weight of the arm on top of him were nice, once he moved around a bit. And his body had been woken up enough to be craving that warmth and weight, even if nothing more could come of it now. "Yes."  
  
There was something extremely comforting about it when Emil sighed happily and nuzzled into his hair. He relaxed, and felt oddly secure in doing so. A mix of vodka and exhaustion soon sent him solidly off to sleep.  
  
Lalli woke up to a cotton-dry mouth, the scent of another man's vodka sweat, and hair sticking to his forehead. Emil had disentangled himself sometime in the night and rolled to face away, so now Lalli's side and forehead were clammy with the sweat of his back. Lalli leaned over Emil to reach the glass of water he'd stashed near his bed before he even went out, drank it in one go, then returned to a horizontal position while he stared at the ceiling and waited for the memories of last night to drip-feed back into his skull.  
  
The facts of Emil being asleep next to him, but both of them still having their pants on, seemed to correspond to his memories. That was a good sign. The fact that he had a sound asleep Emil in his bed was a different kind of good sign. It was still a slightly terrifying sign, but from what he could remember feeling the night before, perhaps what it signified was worth it.  
  
He tried to judge the light outside. They would both be late soon for the things they had to go do if they lay here any longer. A new sunbeam climbed its way through the window and brightened the room, and Lalli squinted, silently entreating upon Pekko to share the wisdom of why he had first grown the barley and brewed the beer, despite surely having some awareness that humans would one day use the knowledge to do this to themselves. Gingerly, he shook Emil's shoulder. "Emil!" He was greeted by a unanimously negative noise. "Emil. It is morning."  
  
Emil turned towards him, blinking, then very resolutely closed his eyes again. "No."  
  
A part of him - the part noticing how even after a night of heavy drinking, Emil lying next to him was a sight he needed to take in - wanted to indulge Emil's insistence that the sky itself was incorrect, but that was not an option. "I need to leave. You need to leave."  
Emil made a face and another incoherent noise.  
  
"I am leaving in five minutes."  
  
Emil looked incredibly sorry for himself as he looked around the room. "Where's my shirt?"  
  
"You lost it before we came here."  
  
"Oh. I remember now."  
  
Lalli climbed over Emil, opened his cupboards and began to mechanically stuff a few slices of bread into his mouth, drinking down almost an entire glass of water with each one. "You have things you need to go and do."  
  
"Oh. Yeah. I remember also that. Did I say I meet Jaana this morning?"  
  
Lalli grunted through his mouthful of bread. He didn't know what Emil had been saying to Jaana. "You were speaking Swedish."  
  
Emil was sitting up on the bed, and looking at him in a way that seemed ... upset? He had seemed the very opposite of upset last night, so Lalli assumed it was just the fact that he had to get up and do things with a hangover. Well, such was life. "You can borrow a shirt if you want. You should go find her."  
  
Emil nodded and went to look through Lalli's tiny stash of clothes for anything that would fit him. His largest item, a very worn winter sweater, made it over his head and clung to his ribs. It didn't suit the day outside but it would have to do. Lalli was deeply tempted to re-enact the memory of lying against Emil's ribcage himself, but it would have to wait. "See you."


	13. Chapter 13

Jaana had decided that the party was over after her failed attempt at propositioning Emil. She had gone home, drunk a large glass of water, and even eaten a bowl of porridge before she passed out. Consequently, she woke up feeling more or less alright, with a clear memory of Emil having promised to meet her outside the brewhouse. Washing her face and fixing her hair back, she decided that she might as well continue the conversation she had started, but more adeptly and directly. It was a stroke of luck, really. She had been about to come out with something that would probably have sounded deeply stupid, and now she was going to go meet him and get the chance to ask him with some degree of tact. She was out of the door before any of her hungover housemates had even left bed, and the day was bright and sunny. She felt lucky.  
  
From the way he looked when she met him outside the brewhouse, it did not seem he had had the peaceful early night he planned on. He had found a shirt, but certainly not one that was either seasonally appropriate or actually his. By means of preamble, she commented on the state he was in. The noise Emil made in response was both incoherent and despairing, so she pressed him, partly to start the conversation and partly out of genuine concern. "What's the matter?"  
  
Emil waited until they'd walked a little way and sat down to reply. "Jaana, I think I don't understand Finnish men."  
  
That was not the response she expected. "How do you mean?"  
  
Emil ran his fingers through his hair like a distressed cat trying to soothe itself with grooming. "I went home with someone last night and I... he didn't seem like the type to just kick you out in the morning."  
  
Jaana nodded. Oh.   
"I dunno, he's always been... sometimes I feel like I don't 'get it' with him, but last night he seemed like he really - sorry, is this too much?"  
  
Jaana shook her head. "No, no, it's fine! He seemed like he cared a bit more than that, you mean?"  
  
Emil looked wistful. "He really, really did."  
  
Alright, maybe that was slightly too much. Still, she put on a sympathetic face. "He sounds like kind of a jerk if he changed up that fast."  
  
Emil looked taken aback. "I know he isn't."  
  
Well, there went any hope for Emil, on many levels.  Emil continued. "We both needed to get out, and he had urgent stuff to do, and he wasn't, you know, actually mean about it, so I guess I should just... find the time to talk to him about this."   
Jaana nodded, resigning herself to categorising Emil as someone with no sense towards his love life. "Talking can only help."  
  
Emil stood up looking a bit less dead on his feet and extended a hand to Jaana. When she stood up, he hugged her. He still smelled very much of booze. "Thanks for being such a great friend, Jaana. Anyway, what was it you wanted to ask me about?"  
  
"Uh. You know what, I don't remember. I was pretty drunk."  
  
Emil gave her a sympathetic look. "Ugh, tell me about it. I'll see you in a few days, okay?"  
  
As she arrived in the skalds' office, she was greeted by a wave of noises that reminded her that to all appearances, she and Emil had left the party at the same time. She sat down at her desk. "No, actually."  
  
Laura raised an eyebrow. "Miri and Sini told me about last night."  
  
Jaana put her face in her palms. "We both went home early. To our seperate beds. Or, sort of."  
  
Miri chipped in. "Sort of?"  
  
"So, I told him I'd meet him again in the morning. And I thought that might be a good time, you know, less chance of making an idiot of myself. And I would have said something! Had he not immediately started telling me about his problems with the guy he went home with last night! I thought Lalli was taking him back to his own bed, but I guess somewhere on the way he got sidetracked..."  
  
The chorus of light teasing transformed immediately into one of sympathy, followed by curiosity. Laura was the first to venture something. "I mean, just because he went home with one man, it doesn't mean he's totally uninterested." Jaana wasn't very reassured. "He seems pretty hung up on this specific guy. You know." She switched into Swedish for a moment, doing an exaggerated impression of the way Emil always patted at his hair. "I know he isn't a jerk, Jaana". The response was unanimous groaning and assurances that Jaana was better off with someone who wasn't that dense anyway, then Laura started with the important questions. "Who's the guy though?" Jaana had to laugh at the immediacy of her priorities, and admit she didn't know. "I bet it's Joonas." That was Laura again. Jaana pointed out that Joonas was out of town right now, and Miri piped up. "Veikka?" A round of disagreement ensued.  
  
"No way! He's so old!"   
  
"Maybe that's what he likes!"   
  
"No, don't say it!"  
  
The speculation was cut short by a knock at the door, which Sini answered. Lalli was standing there, his usual aura of feral grumpiness accentuated by the large mage hood on his shoulders and the pair of freshly dead squirrels he was holding at his side. Despite the assurances Tuuri had always given that her cousin was really sweet underneath it all, Jaana had always found the youngest Hotakainen to be a somewhat intense and antisocial person, and he looked very much on form today. Jaana wondered where on earth he'd gone and abandoned his friend last night.  He leaned in through the open door and addressed her. "Have you seen Emil?"  
  
Jaana turned to face him. "Yes. Why?"  
  
"He said this morning that he was going to go find you. I wanted to make sure it had happened." Lalli explained matter-of-factly.   
  
Jaana struggled to keep her face blank as she put two and two together. "Oh. Well, it did."  
  
Lalli nodded and turned away without saying a word, heading off on whatever business he had. He left behind a few specks of squirrel blood on the floor. Sini closed the door behind him and turned to Jaana, eyes wide.  
  
Jaana knew she was being goaded into more gossiping but found she could only bring herself to turn back to her desk, realising that a lot of things had suddenly slotted into place. "You know what? When I think about it, it makes sense." They had interacted in front of her only a few times, but when they did they had always been oddly soft with each other. Jaana reflected that the history the two of them had together was likely not something she would ever fully understand. Sure, she had been perhaps slightly more invested in her success the night before than she usually was in her summer flings, but at the end of the day, perhaps the fact she truly hoped she and Emil would write often after the summer made it worth keeping it simple. She resolved to go home that evening, break into her stash of cookies, have a glass of wine and give herself a new haircut. There was not much else to be done. 


	14. Chapter 14

Lalli had found Emil in pretty much the same way he always did when he was passing through their camp at dinner time. Emil grabbed his bowl and followed him to the spot by the lake where they'd eaten many times before, the normalcy of it making him feel like he must have dreamed what they'd done the night before. Then again, maybe this was how people were meant to act. It wasn't as if he had a wealth of experience to draw on. There had been one time in basic training where he and another boy had ended up behind a building, but kneeling in the slush had been all kinds of unpleasant, and it had taken so long, and apparently it "killed the mood" to whine about your jaw hurting. The patchy memories he had of last night were a significant improvement on those ones, and the tiny bruises he'd found all over his shoulders were reminders of how enthusiastic Lalli had seemed, but still, Lalli ate his dinner in near-silence.  
  
Emil tried to work out how to even start this conversation. He was still sure that Jaana's advice was good advice, and was determined to carry it out, but this would have been hard enough in Swedish, never mind Finnish.  
  
"Lalli?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Uhm. Last night."  
  
Lalli just watched him, waiting for him to finish his statement.  
  
"Was it, um." He tried to think of the simplest way to phrase what was turning out as a question. "I liked it. Did you like it?"  
  
He hadn't seen Lalli's classic "are you an idiot?" look in a while. Emil kept trying to use his words. "Does that mean 'yes'?"  
  
Lalli nodded.  
  
Emil took a deep breath. "Do you want to do that again?"  
  
Lalli was squinting at him in slight confusion. "Right now?"  
  
"Oh. Uh. I think, um, no. Today I need to go back. To my tent."  
  
"I could come to your tent."  
  
He had said it so totally matter-of-factly that Emil was slightly unsure how to respond. "I share my tent. There's another guy. There, I mean."  
  
"Oh."  
  
 They both watched the lake for a little longer.  
  
"Next time the work stops, you can come to my room, if you want."  
  
Emil saw his opening. "Yes. I want to do that. But I need to say a thing."  
  
Lalli looked at him with some worry, and Emil realised he still didn't know how to phrase what he wanted to say.  
  
"Last night was good. But this morning felt bad."  
  
"You looked hungover."  
  
"It was not just a hangover."  
  
Lalli waited.  
  
"I don't like that you made me go away. It was fast. The feeling was like... you don't care." Emil felt intensely stupid and demanding saying it to Lalli's face, but he'd started it now.  
  
Lalli looked back to the lake, the worry in his gaze more intense. "I didn't want to make you leave. There was work to do."  
  
Emil took a moment to think of a response. "I didn't know what you wanted. Now I know. It's okay now."  
  
Waiting for the time they could make good on that arrangement had been both exciting and incredibly nerve-wracking. Emil had been wondering about what exactly he'd do if Lalli gave him this kind of offer for quite a while. He'd felt horribly guilty in the past for how often that had happened, assuming that Lalli would be really uncomfortable if he'd known about how attracted Emil was to him. It felt like it must be creepy to take touching that was likely totally platonic and turn it into fantasies like that, and even if Lalli never found out about it, that was the last thing Emil wanted to be. Now, though, Emil felt like he had permission. The next time he'd been alone in his tent, he'd recalled the memories of Lalli's tongue on him, turning them into fantasies of a vividness he'd not allowed himself before. The idea that maybe Lalli had jerked off to the idea of him too still felt weird and unlikely, but then, he'd seemed so enthusiastic. Maybe he had. The thought was so new and distracting.  
  
Those memories were exciting, but also the source of some worry. The enthusiasm had been so competently executed, or so it seemed to Emil. The way Lalli had casually pinned him and started exploring his body made Emil really quite sure he must have done this a few times before. Emil had been surprised by being even so lightly restrained, because it had never occurred to him Lalli would like to do that. He was pretty sure he'd be okay with a lot more of it, though. Emil wondered how obvious it was that he had no experience in this at all. That one time in basic training had involved neither reciprocation nor success, so if Lalli was going to let it go further next time, it would all be very uncharted territory. In the day preceding the first reasonable time to visit, this thought became very prominent. By the time Lalli found him waiting outside his room, the nerves had made Emil a bit lightheaded.  
  
It was so much more awkward to start kissing someone sober, but they made it to Lalli's bed. They even made it to the stage of getting their shirts off, before Emil somehow forgot how to breathe properly and had to stop. The look on Lalli's face as he sat up, kneeling between Emil's legs and blinking, just made it worse.  
  
"Are you okay?" Lalli looking at him with wide-eyed worry was definitely not how Emil had wanted this to go.  
  
"I'm." Emil tried to steady his breathing. "Um."  
  
"Do you need a bucket?" The nervous dizziness trying to lift his head off reached a height. Lalli's implication that Emil looked as if he was about to be sick, now and here of all times and places, was so mortifying he wished the bed would fold in on itself and swallow him up. He had to say something, though, so he again tried to fight against his treacherous ribcage, attempting to breathe normally.  
  
"No, I'm..." Emil had learned the word for nervous, at some point, but it refused to be recalled. "I'm scared, I um-" He could feel the start of a nervous ramble begin, but was powerless to stop it. "I, I, Lalli, I don't... I haven't done this, um, before, and I want... I want to make it good, but I don't know... I don't want you to have a bad time, because I like you, a lot, and..." This was probably the least attractive way he could have ended up saying that. Emil could feel himself going pink, then even pinker as his embarrassment deepened over that fact he was actually blushing.  
  
Lalli waited for Emil to finish his sentence, then when Emil stayed silent, started to look like he was thinking. "I haven't either. Is that a problem?"  
  
"No!" At the hint of uncertainty on Lalli's part, Emil sat up further and brushed Lalli's hair away from where it had fallen on his face. "No problem."  
  
"So it's okay." Lalli's double-checking he'd caught the meaning still had a touch of worry.  
  
"I... yeah." The fact neither of them really knew what they were doing was its own kind of terrifying, but maybe if Emil hadn't been able to tell, Lalli couldn't tell either.  
  
Lalli again looked like he was thinking. "I like you a lot too." He mirrored Emil's last action, brushing his fringe back and running his fingers through the hair on his neck. Emil's body was still reacting to his earlier panic, but somewhere within himself, he could feel his brain starting to work through the fact he'd made some wrong assumptions. He breathed a bit more, and it was getting easier.  
  
"Sorry about the... uhm." Emil didn't know if he could label the ridiculous meltdown he'd just had, even in Swedish. "Okay. Everything's okay. Do we, um, do we start again?"  
  
Lalli nodded, his eyes still a little wide with concern. "If you want."  
  
"I really want." Emil was still incredibly nervous, but knowing they were on the same page with a couple of things did help.  
  
Lalli went back to kissing him, and now he knew, Emil realised he could feel that Lalli might still be figuring out exactly how that was done. He listened with a quiet, serious face when Emil worked up the courage to mention he liked some of his ways of kissing more than others. Lalli's own way of explaining was just moving Emil's hands for him, directly to the places he'd decided were alright. Emil found it got easier if he stopped trying to plan. Everything that was happening felt good, and he was working out some things that seemed to make Lalli feel good too, and he didn't know how he'd gone his whole life never noticing how sensitive his own nipples were. The panicky breathing failure made an attempt to return when Lalli finally made a move towards taking Emil's pants off him, but once they were both naked and pressed against each other, it felt surprisingly normal. Emil thought about trying to go down on him, but had no idea how to ask about it, and it made so much sense to just jerk each other off while they continued to kiss. The breathy little moans Lalli finally started producing were so quiet, but so sincere and blissful Emil couldn't help but moan a little back every time.


	15. Chapter 15

The slow retreat of the sun finally began to show in the middle of the night, but its heat had soaked into the land, finally waking everything that grew and crawled. Lalli had his work cut out for him keeping Antti informed of the paths and habits of the trolls. The Cleansers burned and sweated, carving deeper into the toxic woods. The forest needed Lalli's time again, and Antti nodded at his descriptions as he always did. "Two days. We can wait."  
  
Lalli had returned from a long evening of prayer to find Emil sitting on the step near his door. Emil had seemed keen on acting out their earlier plan, then appeared to have second thoughts. Lalli hadn't known what to do, or even whether this reaction was regret or the symptom of being somehow suddenly unwell. He had felt a sinking feeling noticing how soft Emil had gone, and prepared to hear he'd somehow gotten it all wrong. Hearing Emil's explanation had been a relief. It wasn't as though Lalli knew a lot about this topic, but from the conversations he'd overheard, he gathered that someone being very invested in making it good for you was an unusually good sign. Emil tried to cuddle him immediately afterwards, which Lalli found quite overwhelming. Waiting and trying that again had been good, though, the post-orgasm emptiness somehow becoming a warmth Lalli hadn't expected. Despite the heat of the summer and the position on his "proper" mattress, sleeping next to Emil was extremely nice.  
  
The next morning, Lalli had woken up long before Emil and sat on one of the small, irregularly striped mats that had been on the floor of his room since before he had moved in. He had picked up his knife and a stray piece of wood and started to carve into it, whiling away the time until Emil woke. He had seemed a little surprised when he sat up and noticed Lalli on the floor, holding the rough beginnings of a carved lynx. When Lalli wished him a good morning and lightly kissed him, Emil had smiled, soft and shy and satisfied. Lalli had needed to return to the forest, sooner than he wanted to. This time, Emil had understood, and all of what they had together began to feel beautifully simple.  
  
The hot days continued. Onni worried. Of course, Onni always worried, but Lalli felt it too. The forest sang with the life of birds and whole creatures, and howled with beasts and trolls. When the berries began to ripen, the room where the scouts' reports were filed became filled with people, who scoured the most recent alerts to find out which parts of the forest they might brave for their jam and wine. Lalli popped a raspberry into Emil's mouth on the way back from the lake. "Vadelma".  
  
Despite the danger of the late summer, Lalli began to wish on some selfish level that it lasted longer. He held Emil close when he could and thought of the fact that now at least his letters would make sense.  
  
Finally, summer's inevitable tragedies began to creep into the fabric of life.  
  
Lalli had been sitting near the dock on a warm evening when the boat arrived. Emil had insisted that he come with him when he and his friends in town sat there to eat and watch the traffic. He knew these four women mostly spoke Swedish to Emil, but they and Emil tried to keep it to Finnish when he was around. Lalli did appreciate it, but had still been absent enough from the conversation to notice first that the boat was marked from Saimaa, and that the two small children that had been hauled out of it stood on the dock unattached to any of the adults there. He recognised the signs of another island of destroyed families and few survivors.  
  
He had tapped Sini on the shoulder and pointed. Her face had fallen as she, too, recognised the signs. The whole group had abandoned their conversation to follow him to the dock, where a man had explained to him that he'd been exploring an island that had gone quiet a week before and followed the trail left by some now-dead parent. The room where they'd been locked was marked. It was the best thing anyone could have done. Emil had first tried to pick up one of them, then lifted them both when he saw the silent panic induced by seperating them even that much. Lalli had told him to take them to Merja, the old woman who took in most of these cases. Precise directions had followed in Swedish from Jaana. Emil had held the two blank-faced children close to his chest and done as he was told.


	16. Chapter 16

Emil remembered when he had been a child and first picked up a dead bird. The glassy eyes and stiff way its wings sat against its body had bothered him, but for some reason the main confusion he associated with the memory was how oddly light the bird had been. It had seemed bizarre despite fitting every fact he knew about the world. Birds had hollow bones, and it shouldn't be strange. For some reason, though, it had stuck with him.

When he had first seen the two children by the dock, the empty terror in their eyes and stiff way of standing had been a little reminiscent of that bird. Then he had picked them up, the two of them, and the fact they were so skinny he could lift them like dolls had clashed together memory and experience in a way that was deeply, deeply wrong. He felt so viciously nauseous he thought he was going to be sick, right then and there. He hadn't been. He had stuffed his reaction back inside and followed the directions Lalli gave him. When he saw how bent over the woman working there was and how many she had already, he hadn't wanted to hand them over.

The memory of their faces had haunted him all night, and the next moment he had free, he had come back and told her he would help with anything she needed him to do for them. She had heard his accent and strange use of words, and asked him if he wasn't meant to be going home with the rest of his lot in a month's time. He insisted anyway, and she relented. When she began to go through the list of tasks, he had seen why it had taken so little work to break down her pride. He began to spend all his free time coming to the house full of children, providing a spare pair of hands that he realised were desperately needed. Of course, others in Keuruu had hearts, and would come over to fix the doors or share any extras from their own cupboards. They worked together to meet the childrens' material needs, but all of them had lives of their own. Nobody could come as often as Merja needed. 

Almost none of the children there were as rowdy as his cousins had been. The two small ones he'd taken from the dock, three-year-old Viivi and her older brother Janne, never misbehaved. They never demanded anything. They never screamed for attention. Emil hated it.

Lalli didn't seem to understand why Emil was so obsessed. Emil didn't see how anyone could fail to be. When the weather was beginning to cool but the summer heat still sat in the earth, the Cleanser unit had its first and only death of the season. Lalli had been impassive, and Emil realised that Lalli, too, had always been one not to demand things or scream for attention. He thought about what he knew of Lalli, and Saimaa, and the blankness that loss and neglect seemed to inflict. The suddenness with which certain things made sense was an aching and a lurching in Emil's stomach. He stopped telling Lalli about how difficult his new side job was.

"I don't want to go home", he had told Jaana. "There's too much to do here." Of course, he had never wanted to leave what he had with Lalli, but at least Lalli could write letters and know that he would try to visit as soon as he could. If he left Viivi, all she would ever know was that yet another person had disappeared. 

The end of September loomed. The birch trees lit up with the colours of early autumn, leaves turning to painted flames against their pale trunks. The sun still flared with warmth sometimes, but the rain had begun to gain the bitterness it would have for the rest of the year. Evenings grew shorter and greyer. Lalli promised him over and over that they would write often, and the Cleansers' camp became emptier as each piece of equipment was used for the last time and packed away.


	17. Chapter 17

"I've spoken to Antti as well, he needs a helping hand behind his workshop through the winter and he already knows Emil. He's happy to take him next summer too if he's still around. There's plenty of use for him even on top of helping Merja." Jaana crossed her arms, secure in the absolute watertightness of her plan. Virpi's face was calculating. "It seems like you've thought of everything."  
  
"Indeed I have. No skin off your nose at all. I've filled everything in already, I just need a sign-off on the transfer."  
  
"All the paperwork done already? Music to my ears." Jaana had known that would be a selling point. "You can go tell him that I don't see why not."  
  
Jaana found Emil waiting outside. He looked at her hopefully. "She said yes."  
  
"Jaana, you're a hero!" He paused. "And everyone's really okay with me getting Tuuri's old room? If it's too weird then really, honestly, I can try to find another place."  
  
"We were thinking of rearranging the whole house soon anyway."  
  
The two of them stood for a moment, unsure what really came next.   
  
"Don't you want to go tell a certain someone you won't be leaving his bed cold all winter?"


	18. Chapter 18

Lalli had returned to night scouting and seen much less of Emil, which was a good thing, because he never wanted Emil to know about the hollow anger that was now chewing through him from the inside out.  
  
Emil had done nothing wrong, and Lalli knew it perfectly well. Lalli was aware people found him strange and antisocial, and he supposed he must be. He missed things that others found obvious, was taken to be joking to be wasn't. Life had always been like that. But he still knew that wherever this anger had come from, it was not the normal anger he reacted with when someone had wronged him or someone he cared about. It was deeply not in line with how he should feel, sitting in him like a disease, at odds with his flesh and spirit. He had finally swallowed his trepadition and visited Onni to ask if he had felt such an anger before, telling him in halting, imprecise words about how when he passed Emil in his work and saw him cheerfully making a fool of himself, drawing out with faces and noises what laughter the Saimaa children were capable of, the vicious clawing in his belly and chest made him want to run into the forest and never return.  
  
Onni had become very, very quiet.  
  
He was usually a master of easy silence. Lalli couldn't remember a time when an evening with Onni hadn't meant long stretches without conversation, perhaps broken by him singing prayers punctuated by his kantele, or by the echoing vibrations of his jaw-harp. But the way Onni sat then had reeked of discomfort. Lalli had waited for him to speak.  
  
"There's only waiting."  
  
Lalli had been surprised by the sound of his voice. "Waiting for what?"  
  
"Waiting for the anger to turn into whatever it really is."  
  
It had made no sense to Lalli. Onni had made it sound as if human emotions were a vat of wine. Was he meant to just wait for the miasma that had been woken in him to finish eating itself, in the hope that one day it miraculously cleared? He told Onni that he was confusing fixing his brain with making beer.  
  
"Perhaps it is like that. All things mellow with time." Onni was unsure. He knew the names of every spirit that whispered, could heal disease and stop blood, but many things remained a mystery to him.  
  
The first snow came, dusting the flattened wreckage that the Cleansers had left behind. This was the time for winter to finish purging the land of the evil that infested it, like the long sleep that knit a body back together after a restless fever. The angry wounds of the forest were covered with a softness and a blankness that Lalli envied. He asked Onni to teach him the runo that soothed a person into this deep sleep, and walked in the thickening snow, invoking it over the fields. The gods would bring down a winter that made sure no trace of sickness was left here.  
  
He didn't need to purposefully avoid Emil. Emil was tired and busy, and when he saw Lalli he apologised for always being with his work. Lalli let him be, and ran back into the longer and longer nights. He sang the runo of rest and healing again, to the forest, to the fields. He realised as the first ice appeared on the lake that somewhere in the gradual softening and lengthening of the shadows, his anger had softened too, into an aching, hollow grief.  
  
It might have been softer, but it wasn't always easier. It seeped like cold water into rigid feelings Lalli had always leaned on. He decided not to fight it. He had learned, now. He would let his old grief sit in the back cupboard of his mind, and know what it was, and check on it on in the hope it would one day mellow. It would be given as much time as it needed. He didn't know whether a lost childhood could ever entirely stop being bitter. But in the mean time, life would go on.  
  
He was on his way out and saw Emil in the street again, holding shards of reflective material that looked like they had been taken from some military wreckage and carefully smoothed off at the edges. He was with the two children he'd picked up at the dock, and was making them stand still while he tied the shards to their coats. The sight of him inspecting his work before letting them loose in the street overwhelmed Lalli with some kind of emotion he couldn't explain or account for, but realised with relief was a good one.


	19. Chapter 19

Emil slept like the dead, his body heavy with a level of exhaustion that could only be rivalled by what he'd felt the winter before. The previous day, the morning had been free, and Viivi and Janne's immunity tests had finally come back from Sweden, so he had taken them out by the lake. He had told them that it was only December still and they had to be careful, but Viivi had wandered and fallen partway through the ice, soaking one leg with the horrible cold underneath. She had scrambled out and through the snow to where Emil had been occupied retying her brother's boots, howling and teary-eyed and leaping on Emil as if he had the power to magic away the cold. She had then decided to lie on the ground and wail rather than walk home with a cold leg, so he carried her, with her screaming bloody murder in his ear and kicking at the indignity of being made to wait for her magic warmth the whole way. Once they were inside, she had proceeded to scream some more, through the whole process of him changing her trousers and convincing her to put on new socks.

In other words, she had been as loudly, insistently dependent as a three-year-old was meant to be, and when Emil was finally done with his long afternoon behind Antti's workshop, he had sat in the kitchen at home and sobbed with a weird sense of relief. It wasn't the first time a moment like that had made him cry, and there was still so much progress to be made. Miri had listened to him try to explain it, made him a cup of tea, and told him to go get some sleep.  
  
Emil was woken up long before sunrise by an ice-cold hand slipping under his blankets, followed by an ice-cold person. Emil still had no idea how Lalli got up the outside of the house and opened a locked window. The first time he'd done this, around a month ago, he had got the wrong room. The whole house had been woken up by the sound of a shoe being thrown and Sini's uncharacteristically loud _"Mitä vittua, Lalli!?"_ when he had unlocked her window and pounced in at an hour only the most optimistic would have called the crack of dawn. It had really brought home how out of touch they'd gotten with their busy schedules, because it had been several weeks at that point since the whole household had rearranged itself, rooms being swapped around and everything disused being recycled into Miri's endless projects. Even now that Lalli had the right room, it was undoubtably a weird habit, but both Lalli and his schedule were weird, so it fit. Often he would be gone again long before the sun, but sometimes, especially if Emil managed to keep him occupied for long enough, Lalli would remain sleeping in his bed and be eating whatever you called a breakfast at dinnertime in their kitchen when Emil came home.

"One day, someone will come through that window to kill me, and I won't know to wake up because I am too used to you doing this."

"Impossible. Nobody would want to murder you."

Emil nuzzled into Lalli's neck. His body was freezing against the blanketed warmth of Emil's skin, but given the cold night he'd come from, he thought it was fair enough for Lalli to come and steal his heat. "Why's that?"

"Because then the murderer might have to do your job, and nobody but you is mad enough to enjoy that."

Lalli had begun to slip a cold hand under Emil's shirt and Emil squirmed, already halfway back to sleep. "It's so early. I'm tired." He wrapped himself around Lalli's icy limbs, kissing him on the temple. "Later."

Lalli was still there when he woke up, now soundly asleep himself. The sun was halfway through its attempt to rise. At this time of the year, it would usually still be dark till long after Emil had set out for the day, but in the time around the winter solstice Keuruu had slowed to a crawl, and even Emil had a day completely free. He sat up, taking care not to disturb the man next to him. He knew it was cheesy to think about Lalli's sleeping face the way he did, but the morning light on his delicate cheekbones and long, pale eyelashes made it hard not to do. Emil eased himself over him, smoothing the blankets back down as he left his bed.

There was a woven bag hanging on the back of Emil's doorknob, and inside was a skinned rabbit. Miri would be pleased. Lalli had even listened to what she'd said about her stew recipes usually calling for rabbits rather than squirrels.

Jaana was in the kitchen when he came down with the bag. The weird fringe she had cut herself a few months ago was finally on its way to growing out. "Oh, the cat's visited!" Emil couldn't really disagree with the nickname his housemates had given Lalli when he'd started to bring gifts along with his morning visits. "Congrats on keeping it down for once. I was starting to think I would never go another week without being woken up by someone moaning Swedish into a pillow."

Emil made an expression of mock offence and reminded her of a certain saying about pots and kettles. "As if you can talk after whats-his-face last week."

Jaana just grinned at him before turning back to the task of siphoning her half-fermented wine from a large bucket to one of the giant bottles.

Emil cut himself several slices of bread and sat down at the desk they'd put against the wall. The kitchen was very crowded now, but all the surfaces did come in handy. Thinking for a moment, he realised that he had left only a tiny chunk of the loaf, and stood up again. He took a jar from one cupboard and poured some of its yeasty goo into a bowl, adding flour and salt from another cupboard and wetting the mix until it formed a slop. He put it in the cupboard by the stove to start its frothing. There was a favour returned to Miri.

Sitting back down again, he began to write.

"Dear Siv,

Thanks for letting me know the library books made it back. Sorry I took all summer to post them. I will pay you back for the fines, I promise, but nobody really uses krona here and I'm not sure what I'll work out. I think I will be alright without you sending any more of my winter clothes. Onni offered to make me a "real hat", which I think means it involves a lot of fur, so I should be warm enough."

He thought about what else there might be.

"Thank you for the jumper you made Lalli. Now that he's finally agreed to try it on, he says it's way more comfortable than his old one. My housemate Miri says she is jealous of how bright the colours you can get in Mora are. I really think you would like her. I know it's unlikely you'll be able to visit, but if you find the time, you can have my bed and I'll sleep in the kitchen."

Another pause, and a mental note to warn Lalli about that well in advance if it happened.

"Lots of love to you and all the others. It's been really tiring. There's a lot of different work, but it's getting less exhausting doing everything in Finnish, so hopefully I will be writing more often soon."

He signed and sealed it, putting it in a pile of letters that he would try to get out on the next boat.


	20. Epilogue

The spray of the sea was turning to rime on every surface of the little boat as it approached the port of Dalsnes. Through the Feburary morning mist, Mikkel could see and hear the coast of Norway looming. He wasn't sure if it was having grown up on an island that was as flat as a pancake, or if this reaction was just a part of being human, but the sight of the fjords and sound of the seabirds through a freezing mist would never fail to fill him with a certain sense of awe and wonder.

It was the exact opposite set of feelings to the ones he held towards the ship's captain, who had fired him the night before for "gross insults to the concept of food" and who was dropping him off the moment they reached land. Said captain was radioing in to Dalsnes now, announcing their approach and asking if there was literally anybody in town who would like to try their luck replacing an incompetent ship's cook. He was in the middle of negotiating a place for them at the dock when a familiar voice butted in from within the control room.

"Hey! I heard there's a Mikkel Madsen on this boat! This is a captain speaking, get him on the radio!"

Mikkel's own freshly former captain had begrudgingly allowed him into the tiny nook in front of said radio. Mikkel leaned down towards the microphone. "Sigrun. It's been a while since I had the pleasure."

"You won't be pleased soon. I've got some terrible news for you."

The tone of her voice was far too jubilant for "terrible" to mean what it usually meant. "Do explain."

"I got a letter from Goldilocks last month."

"How nice for you." Emil had not written to him, although Mikkel had been treated to several long letters from Reynir, mostly rambling at extroadinary length about his involvement in some kind of long-distance Finnish sheep breeding program. Mikkel didn't see what the bad news for him was yet.

"You owe me 50 krona."

Surely not. "How on earth has he made that happen _now_?"

"He's moved to Finland."

"You are shitting me."

"I have never shat you less in my life."

Mikkel heard a throat clear behind him. "Is this strictly official business, Mr. Madsen? If not, I'm going to have to take over again."

Mikkel informed him in a tone of great joviality that if he had wanted to continue giving him orders, he shouldn't have stopped being his boss. He leaned his bulk into the doorframe, casually and totally blocking the captain's attempts to get back to the radio.  
"I don't think I can be expected to hand over the money without any proof."

"I kept the letter."

"Well, I suppose I've never had any doubt that he wanted to, but actually arranging it seemed like a competence too far."

"That's where you're wrong, mutineer! My little Viking learned from the best. Dock, 1100. Exchange of letter and money. Also, lunch. Cooked by somebody not you. See you then."

"Mr. Madsen, if you don't let me back at this radio-"

Mikkel leaned to the other side, letting the smaller man get an arm in without acknowledging his words at all. "See you then, Sigrun."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ridiculous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463813) by [Urania_baba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urania_baba/pseuds/Urania_baba)
  * [The Skald Girls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14491245) by [Urania_baba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urania_baba/pseuds/Urania_baba)
  * [Feral Grumpiness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14525514) by [Urania_baba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urania_baba/pseuds/Urania_baba)




End file.
